A BERMUDA LILY 

VIRGINIA W. JOHNSON 







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BERMUDA LILY 


BY 

VIRGINIA W. JOHNSON ^ 

Author of Summer Days at Vallombrosa; Many 
Years of a Florence Balcony; Como, a World’s 
Shrine; Florence, the Lily of the Arno; Genoa, 
Birthplace of Columbus, etc., etc. 



NEW YORK 

THE A. S. BARNES COMPANY 




Copyright, 1912, 

By Virginia W. Johnson 


©CI,A328537 \ 

A. - I 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. Prospero’s Daughter 1 

11. Noah’s Ark 11 

III. Ariel 24 

IV. A Miranda 35 

V. The Sting of a Remembrance . . 41 

VI. In a Cave 51 

VII. Cousins 69 

VIII. Submarine Gardens 84 

IX. Evening 101 

X. The Message of an Old House . . 112 

XI. A King of Finance 117 

XII. A Girl’s Hero 131 

XIII. A Bermuda Lily 140 

XIV. The Parish Church 149 

XV. A Christening Party .... 167 

XVI. Once and Forever 174 

XVII. How Captain Cox Took Ship . . 182 

XVIII. Christmas 194 

XIX. A Sailor’s Luck 205 

XX. News 211 

XXI. The Signing of a Will .... 215 

XXII. The Unspoken Word 223 

XXIII. A Human Harp 231 

XXIV. “ By the Shade of a Calabash 

Tree ” 240 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XXV. Tropical Moonlight 246 

XXVI. Pestilence 256 

XXVII. On the Bermuda Reef .... 260 

XXVIII. A Delayed Letter 266 

XXIX. A Woman Gardener . . . . . 272 

XXX. Alone 277 


** We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our 
little life is rounded with a sleep/^ 


The Tempest. 



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INTRODUCTION 


The coral islands, “ the storm-vexed Bermoothes,” 
rise in mid- Atlantic. The reef is an ocean world. Life, 
in manifold forms flourishes on the low, green-fringed 
margin of shore built from submarine depths by the 
polyps. Generations of men find here a home from 
birth to death, while the lighthouse sheds a beacon ray 
of hope far over the waste of waters to ships on the 
high seas. 

Truly, the mysterious first principle triumphs, with 
the recurring seasons, over elements of destruction in 
the perpetual conflict waged by wind and wave for 
supreme possession of the spot. What memories of 
this miniature sphere may be evoked by the scent of 
the Bermuda lily, blooming in old gardens of Canada 
and England, and even familiar as the pearly white 
chalice of sickly perfume in the flower of the Annuncia- 
tion on church altars of Italy. How suggestive the 
modem statuette on a bracket of the wall becomes as 
embodying the Spirit of Storms, advancing lightly yet 
swiftly towards the chain of islets, with a sweep of 
translucent draperies, the hooded face as stern as 
destiny. 

To the meditative reader, a paragraph in the latest 
journal acquires a thrilling significance: Our Ber- 

muda observer cables that there are indications of a 
cyclone advancing from the region north of the Wind- 
ward I stands 

Yonder is a realm of ocean, where the song of Ariel 
wooes the ear in the warm breeze. Iris slants earthward 


INTRODUCTION 


on a rainbow, and the lament of Caliban mingles with 
the moaning of the sea in cavern and inlet. 

Let us still cherish the belief, even in an age of doubt, 
that the great Master Shakespeare stretched his wand 
of Imagination towards the Bermudas when he in- 
voked the spirits of wind and storm. 


CHAPTER I 


PROSPERO’S DAUGHTER 

Albert Everhard knocked on the door of his 
daughter’s chamber at seven o’clock in the morning. 
“ Time to awaken, Bertha,” he said in cheerful accents. 
“ You can take a sea-bath this morning. The weather 
is fine. Get up, child.” 

Bertha made a drowsy and inarticulate response. 
She rubbed her eyes, and lifted her head from the pil- 
low. Ah, how delicious are morning slumbers to healthy 
youth ! 

In this modest home the varying moods of the master 
made the fair weather or perturbations of the moral 
atmosphere. His casement frequently remained closed 
until noon, when he would emerge pale, hollow-eyed and 
morose in humor. Such enervating seclusion signified 
a night of restless movement, now out of doors beneath 
the stars, and now seated at a table littered with books 
and papers. These moods were further associated with 
a small vial, containing a dark liquid, on a shelf of a 
little closet of the wall. Bertha had always regarded 
the mysterious cupboard, of which her father kept the 
tiny key on his watch-chain, with dread. She had some 
vague intuition that the bottle of sinister aspect repre- 
sented the family skeleton. She asked no questions, 
and had never confided her misgivings to her relations. 
She was a valiant defender of the domestic hearth- 
stone. 

The girl arose, twisted her blond tresses on the top 
1 


A BERMUDA LILY 


of her head with a long pin, in a Chinese coiffure, thrust 
her feet into leather slippers, and enveloped herself in 
a faded dressing-gown, a relic of her mother’s ward- 
robe, then emerged with a rough towel thrown over 
her arm, and tripped down to the shore. 

The sky was blue, the sunshine warm, and the sea 
extended to the horizon in a sheet of sapphire hue. 
Bertha approached a rocky barrier, entered a natural 
arch, decended several steps cut in the interior of the 
cave to a ledge, and the next moment sprang into the 
water flowing through a wide aperture seaward. This 
bath, carefully adapted by Everhard, was ever a realm 
of enchantment to his daughter. When she glided into 
this brimming basin of liquid crystal she was no longer 
a commonplace maiden. She had confided childish 
secrets to the wavelets, with her years of growth, and 
the vaulted roof above this cool retreat echoed back the 
laughter or ripple of song which escaped her lips. Her 
father told her delightful tales of German and Scla- 
vonian fairy lore in moments of amiability. When 
taught to swim in the safe and shallow pool she became 
a true water baby, in fancy. How readily juvenile wit 
substituted fins for the mere mechanical movements of 
light heels, and she dived into shadowy depths of sea 
beyond the rocks, undismayed by a possible lurking 
shark, to visit the little people of another sphere in their 
favorite haunts on terms of confidential intimacy. The 
sea cucumber was to be found on the bottom, a leathery 
cushion of a creature, furnished with a bundle of ten- 
tacles around the mouth, and too busy eating the white 
sand to respond to any polite salutations on the part of 
a human sprite. The urchin rolled over the ledges, 
walking on tough spines, like stilts, of a somewhat testy, 
leave-me-alone mood, in search of a safe retreat of coral 


PROSPERO’S DAUGHTER 


3 


recess, in which to hollow out a home by means of its 
own marvelous teeth instruments — tiny ivory saw and 
pickaxe combined — wherein to rest at ease, and be 
served with food by the flowing tide. The sea-egg thus 
becomes the emblem of patient perseverance of the weak 
and fragile in attaining an aim. In such dreams the 
bather peeped fearfully into the chasm, where lurked 
the cuttlefish, eluding the embrace of stealthily darting 
arm ready to coil about and crush her. Ah, it was fun 
to tease the hermit crabs, scuttling off with their shell 
mansions on their backs, and to accost the starfish, ask- 
ing news of the cousin of the Abrolhos Reef in Brazil! 
Better still was it to glide in a mazy dance, a game of 
hide-and-seek with the nimble fish folk, in and out 
amidst the purple sea-fans waving slowly in the current, 
the masses of orange-tinted brain-stone within the line 
of breakers of the growing reef, and the nullepores of 
shallow reaches, haunt of shrimp, mollusk, and anemone. 

In maidenhood subtle phases of self-admiration be- 
guiled languid summer hours in the bath. She stretched 
her arms in the pure waters, which imparted to softly 
dimpled flesh the tints of alabaster, siren fashion, and 
crooned low melodies, allowing her tresses to float in 
serpentine undulations on her shoulders. Then she 
became Marlowe’s Naiad with hair to gild the waves. 
The girl would not have confided these idle fancies to 
her father. He might chide her rather than discern 
germs of a poetical imagination in such reveries. 
Vague discontent, half formed aspirations, yearnings 
for the unattainable vexed her spirit, at times, as 
phosphorescent shapes flashed and trembled through 
marine depths in the gathering twilight, sudden 
gleams of luminous bands with a gliding, sinuous mo- 
tion, glowing discs, or pale stars, all lost, gradually 


4 


A BERMUDA LILY 


extinguished in the uniform darkness and opacity of 
commonplace reality once more. 

On this autumn day the bath invited no indolent 
dreamings, but consisted of a plunge in stinging cold 
water, awakening to warm vitality all the pulses of 
healthy youth. Bertha saw a ship approaching the 
islands. She watched it through the arch of rock with 
a sudden thrill of interest. Climbing the rock-hewn 
flight of steps, she ran across the sunny space of open 
ground, regained the house, and her own chamber, 
hastily completed her simple toilette, and joined her 
father and the boy, Pedro. These two had paused in 
the open door to watch the passage of the vessel. 

“ What ship is it.^ ” inquired Bertha, eagerly. 

“ A man-of-war,” replied Everhard with indifference. 
“ The arrival of a frigate is not a matter of much 
moment out here. Come and break your fast, child.” 

Bertha lingered, noticing the graceful outline of the 
slowly moving craft. Possibly her own buoyant humor 
colored the scene, imparting the freshness of the first 
beam glittering on the sail that brings our friends up 
from the under world. A puff of smoke, and the report 
of a gun was speedily followed by another from a bat- 
tery on shore. Bertha made a little, mocking obeisance. 

“ My ship ! ” she exclaimed, as she returned indoors, 
responsive to a second and more impatient summons 
from her father. 

The preparations for a morning meal revealed the 
frugal simplicity, not to say haphazard management, 
of this semi-tropical household. In a small room, with 
the walls whitewashed to a crude tint, a stone floor, and 
wholly devoid of pictures or ornaments of any sort, the 
master was making coffee in a glass receptacle with 
complicated tubes, placed on a window ledge. This 


PROSPERO’S DAUGHTER 


5 


casement was guiltless of curtains. A table of dark, 
polished wood, much the worse for wear, occupied the 
center. The boy Pedro brought two plates, napkins, 
cups and saucers, and a morsel of butter in a shallow 
platter. 

‘‘ Bread all gone,” he announced in an unceremonious 
fashion, opening the doors of a dresser and inspecting 
the shelves. 

“ To be sure,” responded Everhard. “ I must not 
forget to buy some loaves in town to-day.” 

He took a saucer of well-roasted coffee kernels, 
sniffed at them critically, and ground them in a small 
hand-mill. 

“ There’s some more biscuit in the box,” suggested 
the boy in hopeful accents. “ Yes, and half a tin of 
potted tongue, and fowl, and a bit of cheese.” 

“Where are the two cocoanuts for missy ” de- 
manded the master. 

“ Here,” said Pedro, promptly. The lad lifted two 
cocoanuts, still in the husk, from the dresser shelf, put 
a little cup of polished palmwood, such as garnish the 
meals of the Pacific Islands to hold salt water, gift of 
the Captain, her uncle, beside Bertha’s plate, bored 
holes in the fruit with a gimlet, and poured the milk 
into the utensil. 

“ For me ! ” exclaimed Bertha. Her companions en- 
joyed her surprise. 

“ Of course you like cocoanut milk, baby that you 
are still,” said her father in a tone of indulgence. “ I 
bought them of Sam last night.” 

“ How good of you,” said Bertha, sipping the de- 
licious fluid from the cup of palmwood. “ May I help 
you with the coffee, papa.^ ” 

“ No ! No ! Do not meddle.” 


6 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ Papa’s own coffee,” said the daughter, exchanging 
a mirthful glance with Pedro. 

The significance of the rite of coffee-making on this 
morning consisted of Everhard having planted the valu- 
able shrub on a sheltered terrace, cultivated the growth 
with assiduous care, then gathered the ruddy, cherry- 
like fruit, and dried it in a sunny exposure to detach 
the twin kernels within the pulp. He now poured the 
liquid into a cup, added a lump of sugar, and tasted it 
slowly. 

“ The flavor is good,” was his comment. 

“ Better than everyday coffee ” queried Bertha, 
blithely. 

Her father made a slight grimace. “ Ungrateful 
Bermuda Isles that ripen charily coffee, and refuse to 
mature your cocoanuts at all,” he scoffed. 

“ Fortunate Isles ! Isles of the Blessed ! ” cried Ber- 
tha with spirit. “ How can you be so unreasonable, 
father.? Only the other day you were quoting the 
quaint author of that ancient work, the ‘Historye of the 
Bermudaes,’ in which he states that the elevation is 
equal to the Holy Land, and in particular of the city 
of Jerusalem.” 

“Brava! You are a loyal Bermudian,” said the 
coffee-maker, as he drained his cup somewhat ruefully. 

“ What else should I be.? ” inquired the girl, as she 
sought another biscuit in the Huntly and Palmer tin, 
wherewith to appease a healthy appetite. “ Are you 
truly patriotic to your country, sir.? ” she added, jest- 
ingly. 

Everhard’s face became grave, and he passed his hand 
over his beard, a habit with him when annoyed. 

“ I have no country,” he said, briefly. 

“ Then I have none,” persisted Bertha. 


PROSPERO’S DAUGHTER 


7 


“ You are a Bermudian. Your mother was one. 

“ But a child takes the nationality of the father,” 
said Bertha. 

“ From that point of view you are Austrian.” 

“ Am I ? Shall I ever visit your country, papa ? ” 

“ Probably not,” rejoined Everhard, with a touch of 
hauteur in his tone. “ Had you been a son, for ex- 
ample, I might have decided to take you back. Who 
knows ” 

“ Alas ! I am only a girl,” sighed Bertha. Then 
she continued, impulsively : “ Papa, who are you ? ” 

“ Your servant, missy. A poor teacher of languages 
on the Bermuda Islands,” said her father, ironically. 

She shook her head. “ You are unlike the rest of us,” 
she whispered. “ Mamma knew it quite well.” 

The features of the man softened to an expression of 
tenderness. 

“ Your mother loved me, child. She gave her entire 
life, heart and soul into my keeping. God knows if I 
was worthy of the trust ! The love of man and woman 
is a wonderful, a supreme sentiment, binding the uni- 
verse together. You do not understand. Possibly it is 
best if you never fully comprehend the limits of human 
passion and sacrifice.” 

Bertha was mute and perplexed. The boy broke the 
cocoanuts with a stone, brought a portion to the table, 
and seated himself on the step of the open door to 
nibble the remaining fragments of white nut with sharp 
young teeth. 

“ Life is far better here,” continued the exile, after 
a pause, adopting a vein of egotistical soliloquy which 
was habitual to him in the domestic circle. “ Blessed ob- 
scurity ! I do not hear the fanatic, the assassin, or the 
thief in those approaching my throne, like the Austrian 


8 


A BERMUDA LILY 


Emperor and the Russian Czar. We dwell remote from 
strife of all sorts, the wars slaying thousands of strong 
men needed in other fields, the chicanery of government, 
the fever of politics.” 

Father and daughter bore no striking resemblance to 
each other. He was a man of somewhat advanced age, 
tall and thin in form, with clearly accentuated features, 
silvered locks and beard, and black, bushy brows shad- 
ing a pair of brilliant eyes capable of a great variety of 
expression, from a dreamy softness to the flashing con- 
centration of a domineering will. His habiliments, 
worn with a certain grace, consisted of a loose silken 
coat, in summer, exchanged for a garment of rough 
brown cloth in winter, shoes of untanned leather, and 
a felt hat with a wide brim. Albert Everhard invariably 
attracted the regard of a stranger. Bertha bloomed in 
the freshness of her eighteen years, with tresses of red- 
dish gold, blue eyes of a frank expression entirely devoid 
of coquetry, and a fair complexion delicately tinted on 
cheek and lip. She was a startling contrast to the 
clouded, or olive-hued, women of southern latitudes. 
The oval contour of her face, the nose a trifle long and 
thin, with flexible, expressive nostrils finely, cut, and 
the mouth well formed and mobile, with regular, white 
teeth, had a distinction of which she was ignorant. The 
coloring of youth was the dew on the flower in this 
slender, erect and active girl, clad in a shabby frock 
which could not conceal the supple and rounded outlines 
of a graceful figure. Her father was wont to lightly 
relegate her to the maternal side of the family in traits 
of character and personal appearance, while her kin- 
dred equally maintained that she was wholly dissimilar 
to their race. The criticism of her cousins was invari- 


PROSPERO’S DAUGHTER 


9 


ably disparaging, while her uncles, with masculine lib- 
erality, considered her rather nice looking. 

Everhard arose from the table with the announce- 
ment that he was engaged to give French lessons to a 
milliner’s daughter at Hamilton about to visit Europe. 

“ Could I not teach the young lady ? ” Bertha asked 
with affectionate solicitude. 

“ No, my child. This pupil will require a polish in 
a dozen lessons which you might fail to impart.” 

The clatter of little hoofs became audible. The 
master’s equipage was a light cart, drawn by a gray 
donkey of sagacious aspect, led by the lame sailor, Eric. 
Everhard had given the animal the name of Pegasus 
in his usual ironical vein, and Bertha abbreviated the 
title to Peggy. Pedro hugged the donkey as a good 
comrade, and the young mistress proffered such deli- 
cacies as a biscuit from the tin and several lumps of 
sugar snatched from the table, to the pet. 

“ Don’t forget to buy some provisions for the 
house,” she warned. 

“ What shall I buy.^ ” questioned Everhard as he 
climbed into his primitive vehicle. 

“ Oh, the bread, you know, and some tea, perhaps, 
and you are fond of chocolate,” she suggested care- 
lessly. 

“ I may not return before evening. I must look in 
on Aunt Ellen, or the Captain, say about dinner time. 
How will you manage ? ” 

“ I can get along very well,” said Bertha, cheerfully. 

He uttered a chirruping note of command to the 
donkey, and the little cart rattled away. Eric limped 
back to his own quarters, an out-building where he kept 
nets and fishing tackle. The boy brought a basket. 

“ I’m going fishing with Eric for sea-eggs,” he said. 


10 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ I know a place to dive for them. You can roast 
them in the shell. We eat ’em raw.” 

“ All right,” assented Bertha. “ Papa likes an ome- 
lette of sea-eggs.” 

Pedro regarded her with curiosity. “ Why did you 
call the man-of-war your ship, missy ” he demanded, 
abruptly. 

The girl was silent. Her glance followed the line of 
shore, once more, in the direction where H. M. S. Mag- 
nanimous had entered the dockyard. 


CHAPTER II 


NOAH’S ARK 

Left alone, Bertha suspended a grasscloth hammock 
between two trees and seated herself in it swing-wise. 

Sounds of domestic work in the house fell on her 
ear unheeded, the clatter of crockery, the wrenching 
movement of furniture on bare floors, or an occasional 
snatch of negro song from an open window as Susan 
went and came. Susan served as laundress, cook and 
charwoman in the household of Everhard for those 
feminine services not rendered by the Swedish sailor, 
Eric, Pedro, and Bertha herself inspired by fitful zeal. 
From the chimney of the kitchen, a detached building 
with the usual patriarchal hearth, arose the smoke of 
cedar wood. 

This incense of cedar smoke wafted from a Bermuda 
chimney is a memory to the stranger. The scent is 
Nature’s offering ascending on the warm, damp atmos- 
phere, mingled with the breath of the Atlantic Ocean. 

The Bermudians usually christen their homes with 
names characteristic of local environment. The resi- 
dence of Bertha’s absent aunt, Mrs. Hooper, in the 
suburb of Hamilton, was known as “ Rose Hill ” ; that 
of her uncle. Doctor Russell, situated on Harrington 
Sound, had been called for generations “ Palmetto 
Lodge ” ; while the Captain insisted on designating his 
abode on shore as “ The Port.” Everhard early claimed 
for his cottage on the headland that it was a sort of 
Noah’s Ark, as serving to gather together certain waifs 
11 


u 


A BERMUDA LILY 


of humanity and of the animal kingdom. The wounded 
and afflicted of all creeping and flying creatures were 
brought by Pedro to be nursed to health, or perish in 
the sudden annihilation of the vital spark which is so 
remarkable a phase of extinction in the crumbling to 
dust of a mere handful of fur and plumage. A blue- 
bird, the Sialis Sialis of North America that migrates 
south in November, dwelt contentedly in a cage hung 
by a nail to the outer wall of the house, lured to such 
captivity by Pedro with the berries of a wild goose- 
berry bush. A cardinal grosbeak, the Virginia night- 
ingale, occupied a similar prison adjacent, and preened 
silky feathers all day in the sun. A tame heron, clad 
in black and white, and slightly crippled, roamed about 
the premises. A flamingo brought from the Cape Verde 
Islands by Captain Cox, and kept with clipped pinions, 
a true “ wing of flame ” of the Greeks, with an odd, 
small body, stilt legs, and a flat beak curved in a spoon 
shape, held aloof from strangers and accepted food 
only from Eric and Pedro. A spider monkey, Mimi, 
enjoyed much independence of deportment as the mas- 
ter’s pet. Everhard discerned in this “ missing link,” 
first cousin of man, a superiority of demeanor over the 
average cowardly and thieving monkey folk, owing to 
education in Noah’s Ark. Mimi was ludicrously imi- 
tative in polite manners. The last dog, a terrier of 
scrubby exterior but engaging virtues, had tumbled 
into the sea from Eric’s boat. A black cat of demoni- 
acal aspect, with green eyes, pervaded the place in a 
stealthy manner, although whether Susan’s home, Eric’s 
cabin or the cottage was the animal’s abode of prefer- 
ence none might determine. The cat rubbed its head 
in feline allegiance against the master’s knee or purred 
responsive to the caresses of Bertha with precarious 


NOAH’S ARK 


13 


amiability. Habitually at odds with the monkey, with 
much hissing, spitting and sudden, bouncing flight 
through the garden. Puss occasionally played a game 
of romps with this whilom enemy, imbued with the 
weird gaiety so often displayed by cats at the evening 
hour. 

A well regulated young mistress of the house would 
have bestirred herself in such matitudinal duties as 
superintending the sweeping and dusting of a dusky 
handmaiden, or carefully, investigating the resources of 
cellar and kitchen, but Bertha was not a good manager. 
Her Aunt Ellen had endeavored to instill some method- 
ical habits of order in the mind of the girl. She sat in 
the hammock peeling bananas fetched by Pedro before 
bis departure in quest of sea-eggs, instead of zealously 
bestirring herself. Eating was a movable feast with 
her, and indulged in defiance of all laws of digestion 
and hygiene. 

Bertha’s mood was as serenely untroubled as tbe 
day. In thought she followed her father driving the 
grey donkey across the stretch of rough ground, which 
was swept by the sea in storms, to a second headland, 
where the little vehicle would be transported across an 
inlet by means of a clumsy ferry-boat, pulled from 
shore to shore with a rope. Bertha crossed this primi- 
tive ferry, on a holiday, sharing the pleasurable excite- 
ment of fellow passengers and the negro boatmen in 
the difficulty of keeping quadrupeds standing in the 
slanting rush of mid-current. Eric frequently con- 
veyed the family to a distant destination in his boat. 

The daughter seldom questioned her parent as to 
his origin. German by birth, this brilliant, all-wise 
and winning being did not belong wholly to Bermuda. 
Bertha recognized the fact with a pang of jealousy. 


14 . 


A BERMUDA LILY 


She was familiar with the romantic circumstances of 
his coming here. 

Twenty years earlier a flag had fluttered from the 
signal station, announcing to the island world a sail 
to the westward. Night fell, shutting out a stormy 
horizon, and the sea fretting around sunken shoals. 
Bermuda awaited the dawn with humane apprehension 
for the unknown craft. The first tremulous ray of 
another day revealed the one hundred square miles of 
enclosed waters, islands which are mere ledges of coral 
and sand and intricate, winding channels, with the 
vessel caught on a fang of reef, as it were, and lifted 
high in the air. Did not Bertha know the name of that 
ship.^ The Stella, bound from Glasgow to New Orleans, 
laden with salt and in quest of a cargo of cotton, had 
sprung aleak under the forecastle in heavy weather. 
The vessel had struggled on, with shortened sail and 
all hands at the pumps. Great billows swept the wreck, 
and the work of destruction was soon complete. The 
crew was rescued. A bevy of wreckers hovered in the 
vicinity to pick up such harvest of provisions and cargo 
as might float on the tide. The Stella had one passen- 
ger on board. He was a German, going to America, 
who gave his name as Albert Everhard. He had shared 
all the privations of the voyage, making light of hard- 
ships endured, reanimating weary comrades, and devel- 
oping surgical aptitude in binding up bruised limbs. 
Captain Thomas Cox, in port at the time, brought the 
stranger ashore in his boat, smitten with fever, and 
carried him to his father’s house. The sister of the 
Captain nursed the waif thus cast on their care, while 
their brother-in-law. Doctor Russell, rendered all re- 
quisite medical aid. Bertha’s mother was then eighteen 
years of age, and Rachel her senior. Convalescence 


NOAH’S ARK 


15 


was slow for the stranger wooed back to health by these 
gentle nurses. Had he not drifted on a weary way, 
with the darkness of doubt and isolation closing about 
the vessel’s track on a wide sea, and gained a green isle 
of refuge.^ Everhard told his daughter that he was the 
most forlorn bird of passage ever blown by tempests to 
Bermuda. His modest luggage had disappeared for- 
ever when the Stella sank. 

“ I added my kit to the treasures of the deep, except 
my money belt,” he said. The money belt, well lined 
with gold coin, had been emptied in due course of time, 
and carelessly consigned to a shelf. 

Restored to health, the stranger lingered on the 
islands, instead of seeking a wider sphere on the Amer- 
ican continent, rented a small lodging, and announced 
his readiness to teach foreign languages. One day he 
demanded the hand in marriage of Bertha’s mother. 
The senior Thomas Cox, member of the Colonial Par- 
liament, was a testy old man, nursing a gouty foot, 
swathed in flannel, possibly in doleful remembrance of 
a roystering prime of port and Santa Cruz rum drink- 
ing. He questioned so unpromising a son-in-law in 
somewhat blunt fashion. Everhard replied with firm- 
ness and dignity, even a trifle sadly, that he loved 
Mary Cox on the word of an honest man, and wished 
to dwell at Bermuda. Tears, upbraiding, and even 
vehement protestations, had resulted from Rachel Cox, 
the elder sister, tempered by mild mediation on the part 
of Doctor Russell and his wife. Finally the old Colonial 
gave the hasty and inconsiderate consent for which the 
Anglo-Saxon parent is censured, and not without rea- 
son. “ Please yourself,” grumbled Thomas Cox the 
senior. “ A girl is lucky to catch a husband at all in 
these days.” 


16 


A BERMUDA LILY 


Thomas Cox died. Money had ever slipped easily 
through his fingers, acquired in many transactions with 
the more southern islands. Neighbors hinted that he 
had dabbled a trifle in the slave trade before the year 
1807, when such traffic between Africa and the West 
Indies had been abolished. The activity in smuggling of 
the Leeward Islands, Antigua and the French settlements 
of Martinique and Guadeloupe was not unknown to him. 
Enemies accredited him with acquaintance with certain 
famous pirates and buccaneers, followers of Avery, 
Teach, Kidd, or Cornelius, during occasional years of 
absence from his own home. The Bermudian kept his 
own council as to probable adventures, such as visiting 
the island of Samona, off Hayti, where Bovadilla was 
wrecked, and searching for Spanish doubloons among 
the skeletons of the reef. If by chance he had fingered 
some of the hoards of piastres, livres turnois and golden 
crusades from the treasure hold of sunken galleons, or 
the old plate ships, laden at Rio Janeiro and Santa 
Cruz for Lisbon, little of the wealth remained to his 
heirs. Certain it was that he had dealt openly with 
cargoes of redwood, skins, cocoa, medical roots and 
Brazilian cochineal. 

Rachel Cox chose a dull and pompous mate, Andrew 
Hooper, of Rose Hill. A young lady already turned 
five-and- twenty, who had ruled her father’s house, she 
was suspected of a preference for the foreigner who had 
married her younger sister. Albert Everhard devel- 
oped all the eccentricities of a recluse. He invested 
the modest portion inherited by his wife in the pur- 
chase of an unpromising bit of land on a headland of 
the North Shore. He elected to dwell in a Robinson 
Crusoe fashion, his dominions hedged about by a ram- 
part of prickly pear. The oleander, an unwelcome in- 


NOAH’S ARK 


17 


truder of rank luxuriance of growth in Bermuda, 
speedily took possession and spread a canopy of pink 
bloom above the infant head of Bertha. In those early 
years of wedded life happiness pervaded the cottage. 
The young household defied discomfort and the mother 
sheltered the cradle as a bird lines the nest of her fledg- 
lings with downy filaments. When Bertha was ten 
years old she lost her mother. She moped under the 
care of her Aunt Ellen at Palmetto Lodge until re- 
stored to the guardianship of her father. Everhard 
brought up his daughter like a boy, possibly without 
premeditation. He taught her many things, in a desul- 
tory way, not strictly founded on any system of educa- 
tion. Her imagination was fed on the dehghtful lore 
of the German Hausfrau concerning the roses which 
are under the protection of Laurin, King of the Dwarfs, 
and all about the Elder Mother, who must not be vexed 
by having her white flowers plucked, or the Moss- 
women pursued by the Wild Huntsman in storms. She 
knew that Holda sails her silver boat across the skies 
when the moon is bright. Also, she believed that dead 
babies ascend to heaven crowned with strawberry flow- 
ers. She had learned to read and write at her. mother’s 
knee, while her father added foreign languages, draw- 
ing, practice on the violin, and a slow fathoming of the 
resources of the harp. Everhard was an amateur, a 
dilettante, possibly, yet an accomplished musician. The 
violin was the solace of his leisure hours. Altogether 
it was an odd household, where German and French 
mingled with English. Captain Tom Cox, most genial 
of sailors, was astonished to behold a girl play the 
fiddle in a creditable manner. Mrs. Hooper went to 
Europe with her invalid husband. She subsequently 
returned home a widow, dwelt at Rose Hill for a time 


18 


A BERMUDA LILY 


in discontented mood, and departed for England once 
more, inviting her niece, Bertha, to accompany her. 
Everhard demurred, and did not even consult his daugh- 
ter. Mrs. Hooper took with her, as maid, a slender 
brown girl, child of the housekeeper at Rose Hill. Fail- 
ing such an opportunity of education. Aunt Ellen 
placed a subdued and miserable Bertha in the care of 
Miss Cross, a lady who had sought the Colonies instead 
of remaining in the over-stocked London market of gov- 
ernesses, furnished with credentials from a bishop and 
several statesmen. She received Everhard’s daughter 
kindly, even with effusion, and manifested an intention 
of extending such interest to himself. 

Miss Cross was tall, with a long waist, an ingratiat- 
ing bearing, and a formidable list of accomplishments. 
Bertha ran away home, and hid in an adjacent cave, 
when Minerva came in search of her, with skirts kilted 
up for a country walk, and flat boots of serviceable size. 
Aunt Ellen was discountenanced, but insisted on her 
niece spending Sunday with her, at least. The religious 
creed of Everhard was obscure to this Christian woman, 
who suspected him of affinity with dangerous schools of 
skeptical philosophy. He stated, curtly, that he was a 
Roman Catholic. Family interest often took the prac- 
tical form of a visit from Captain Tom, in his boat, 
laden with a case of tea, boxes of guava jelly, hams, 
and smoked tongues from a vessel just arrived from the 
States. In fine weather. Aunt Ellen drove over to the 
cottage in the Doctor’s gig with a capacious basket 
packed with roasted fowls, eggs, plum-cake, and pastry. 
The matron admonished Bertha not to allow her father 
to starve over his books. 

Existence in Bermuda lacks the ease of luxuriant 
abundance of the more tropical islands. Daily life fur- 


NOAH’S ARK 


19 


nishes no equivalent of the bowl of rice of the Orient, 
the farinha of South America, or even the porridge of 
roasted grain or maize of the Canary group, cooked 
over the out-of-door fire of almond shells. Nor did 
the beneficent bread-fruit tree of the South Seas shed 
down its harvest on Bertha’s home, any more than the 
palm family yielded the resources of leaf and fruit to 
all the simple requirements of man. The banana, most 
suave of plants, exacting so little care in return for 
the generous donation of delicious gifts, yet judged 
harshly by the political economists of colder lands, as 
feeding too readily supine indolence, did, indeed, fur- 
nish an occasional feast to youth. 

Eric carried water from the cistern in which the rain 
was collected, and cut wood for domestic use. He fished, 
gathered shells, repaired boats, and rigged toy craft 
for children. Self-supporting in the earning of shil- 
lings, he ate his solitary meals, consisting chiefly of bis- 
cuits, cheese, and salted meats, with the Bermuda onion, 
and lemons. He was surly, disposed to shun his fel- 
lows, and indulged in monotonous soliloquies as he went 
about his daily routine. 

The sailor was a waif picked up by Captain Cox. 
The past of the humble creature was a blank. He was 
a shipwrecked mariner, cast away on one of the islands 
of the Bay of Honduras. Provided neither with axe, 
weapon, or the means of kindling a fire, the sun had 
burned his flesh by day and the dews chilled him by 
night, as he crouched in a sheltered hollow. Stinging in- 
sects tormented his waking hours, and venomous snakes 
menaced him in the ceaseless search for fruits, turtle- 
eggs, and water. He was no Alexander Selkirk, re- 
luctant to return to civilization and leave an enchanting 
retreat of palms, nor a missionary dwelling apart from 


A BERMUDA LILY 


20 

discord in a leaf-thatched hut, but a grim, modem 
reality, such as is found occasionally on the Crozet 
Islands, the Marien Group, and desolate rocks in the 
vicinity of Cape Horn. Had he been abandoned by 
cruel companions in superstitious dread that he was a 
Finn exercising still the old wizard power of calling 
contrary winds.? Had he escaped from some sinister 
craft, as an honest man, when the crew came ashore for 
fuel, preferring freedom and the risks of starvation to 
the plank and the black flag.? Possibly he had been 
saved from a sinking hulk in a bread cask, like the 
Dutchman off St. Helena. 

Captain Cox, cruising near the sandy keys of the 
Bay of Honduras, saw a rag of signal fluttering on a 
lonely stretch of beach. The Bermuda captain was 
proud of his keen sight. The vision of the whaler 
perched aloft in the polar seas and the Pacific is not 
more sure, nor that of the pirate who won the prize of 
the gold doubloon nailed to the mast, by first descrying 
it. No test of the mercantile marine baffled him in 
colors. In addition he could detect the vicinity of ice 
by the smell of the sea, and the approach of storms. 
Captain Cox rescued the castaway, with whom instinct 
had kept the signal of distress hoisted for an unmeas- 
ured length of time. Doctor Russell bound up the 
wounds of the sailor, like a good Samaritan. Ever- 
hard’s interest was aroused. He noted the quality and 
tint of a shaggy mane of reddish hair, and gazed in- 
tently into the bleared and clouded features. 

« He is of a northern race,” he mused. ‘‘ Perhaps 
we have here a case of suspended intelligence from sun- 
stroke or brutality.” 

“ Likely enough,” assented Captain Cox, removing 
his own hat and rubbing the bald spot on the top of his 


NOAH’S ARK 


21 


head somewhat ruefully. “ I mind the day when a fiery 
ray fell on my pate on deck, off the Mosquito Coast, 
and I went raving mad with fever for a spell.” 

Everhard placed his hand on the sailor’s shoulder 
and spoke a few words in Russian, without result. He 
next essayed the same phrase in Danish, then in Swedish. 
Lo ! the waif stammered a slow response. 

“ He is a Swede,” proclaimed his interlocutor. 
“ Surely he is Eric, the Red. Is your name Eric.? ” 

‘‘ Yes,” replied the sailor. 

Everhard turned away ; Eric shambled after him. 

“ I will take charge of him,” quoth the philosopher. 

“ You have visited Sweden.? ” questioned the Captain. 

“No. I was once intimate with Scandinavian stu- 
dents at the university,” said Everhard, abruptly. 

Captain Cox slyly gave Eric a ship’s ration of rum. 
The sailor drank greedily with the speedy result of 
arousing the dormant, bestial nature in ludicrous move- 
ment, inarticulate garruhty and inflamed visage. 

“ Who knows how many years the poor devil may 
have been cut off from his daily grog.? ” chuckled the 
worthy man. 

The child Bertha, terrified by the aspect of this sorry 
ogre, ran and concealed herself. Everhard took away 
the cup with a firm hand. Eric struggled and cursed 
in ineffectual rage. 

“ You shall not drink liquor to steal away such wits 
as you possess,” calm Reason commanded. 

“ Who are you that I should obey you, when the 
fire warms my shrunken and frozen veins.? ” fumed blind 
Sensuality, with lowering mien. 

“ Enough ! Go to your cabin,” said Reason, and 
Sensuality was cowed by a superior intelligence, if not 
wholly conquered. 


22 


A BERMUDA LILY 


Two years later Captain Cox returned from a trip 
to New York. The vessel crossed the Gulf Stream in 
the twilight, and an explosion was audible, succeeded 
by a light on the horizon. A ship was on fire. The 
spectators steered and tacked about all night, while 
volumes of smoke arose and the flames illuminated the 
ocean. A blackened skeleton of wreck remained. Seek- 
ing living men, in vain, amidst the floating debris. Cap- 
tain Cox found a child lashed to a spar, and unhurt. 

Lord Nelson is accredited with the statement that 
at sea nothing is impossible, or even improbable. This 
second waif was fed and petted by the crew and brought 
to Captain Cox’s home. He was an example of those 
survivals of childhood, the infants borne safely in their 
cradles on the floods of inundated rivers, and the off- 
spring of the peasants^ carried off by vulture or eagle 
and deposited on some rocky ledge above the precipice. 
He was a small and slender boy, with supple limbs, 
black hair curling in rings on a graceful head, and 
large eyes veiled by long lashes. When he met the 
meditative gaze of Everhard a smile of naive confidence 
dimpled his cheek, which had the velvet bloom of rich 
fruit, and he ran to the stranger, clasping his hand in 
both of his own with a childish impulse. 

“ Where is your home, little lad.^* ” questioned Ever- 
hard, caressing the curly head. The boy replied in soft, 
lisping accents which were unintelligible. 

“ Sounds like some Indian dialect of South America,” 
suggested the Captain, and consigned him to Everhard’s 
care. 

Bertha devoted herself to this new charge, clothing, 
amusing and teaching him the alphabet. The child was 
docile and coaxing at times, then spurned routine and 
indulged in caprices elusive and mocking. Bertha, in 


NOAH’S ARK 


2S 


whose veins coursed Teuton and English blood, ex- 
claimed, with tears of vexation : 

“ He does not love us any more than Eric ! ” 

“ Yes, he does love us, because he has a soul,” said 
her father. 

Such was Bertha’s sphere. The master returned at 
evening. He was pale, weary and irritable. The girl 
watched the first beam flash from the lighthouse on 
Gibb’s Hill. A prayer, a sentiment of inexpressible 
longing was aroused in her whole being when the pure 
ray of hope shone on the group of islets and the wan- 
derers of the surrounding deep. Is there another light- 
house in the world more suggestive of the nobility of 
its mission than the Bermuda beacon rising on a hill in 
the very bosom of the stormy ocean? The star pierces 
space and greets the kindred shaft of the Great Bahama 
Bank, the red, revolving flame of Gun Cay, pulsing 
eighty feet above the sea ; that of Great Isaac Cay, and 
the signal gleaming on the most southern point of 
North America on Cape Florida. Born in the shadow 
of the Bermuda tower, for Everhard’s child all the 
creeds of humanity seemed to meet in the kindling of the 
lamp destined to keep watch, like some mighty angel 
strong to save. 

In the warm glow of sunset of this calm evening the 
beacon was serenely mild. The girl felt that some 
subtle element of life was ebbing, and the shadow of 
novel influences falling on her path. Her glance fol- 
lowed the track traversed by the ship in the morning. 
Her father had opined, nay, hoped, she might never 
know the fulfillment of a woman’s existence in love and 
marriage. Her youth rebelled. Why should there not 
be a ship coming to her, wafted by soft winds, and 
freighted with all the sweets of happiness? 


CHAPTER III 


ARIEL 

Several days later, Pedro pushed off from the Cove 
in Eric’s boat. Once afloat, his responses to all ex- 
postulations were saucy. 

“ What are you about, youngster ? ” shouted Eric, 
hobbling along the strand. 

‘‘ Just going over yonder,” said Pedro, lifting his 
chin in the air, while the wind ruffled his curls. 

“ I will the master tell,” fumed Eric. 

Pedro laughed. “ I shall come back, oh, very soon ! 
Wait for me there,” and he pulled away rapidly. 

“ Who knows if he will return to-day, and the 
weather is good for my fishing,” muttered Eric. 

But Pedro was destined to keep his word on this 
occasion. The boy did not fear the uncouth mariner in 
his worst fits of temper. He bearded Eric in his den, 
laughed at him, teased and played pranks with his 
goods and chattels with childish audacity. Eric en- 
dured juvenile tyranny with indulgence and toleration. 
His dull, projecting blue eyes followed the nimble 
movements of the lad in his games with Bertha. The 
sailor sought and put together in the dim chambers of 
his brain tales of the goddess Rau, and sea runes. He 
told Pedro about the swimming horse and the emblems 
cut on the rudder blade and oar in Scandinavia. 

Pedro was frolicsome. He had no matured plan 
of mischief-making in appropriating the boat ; only an 
impulse to flit away over the shining waters which flow 
24 


ARIEL 


25 


near the shallows in tints of purest beryl green, merging 
to opal in the direction of the reefs. To live was suffi- 
cient joy to Pedro. His mind was attuned to many 
marvels. He was conscious that the morning was a great 
flower, in the language of Jeffries, drawn around him, 
over, and enclosing, the dome of the sky the drooping 
bell, and the magical essence of it filling all nature. He 
crossed the inlet to the next promontory, drew up the 
boat in a place of safety and leaped out. Fantastic in 
his movements, he ran forward, extending his arms on 
either side. That most subtle medium to childhood, 
fresh air, permeated his frame, and as he sprang from 
rock to rock he seemed to float on liquid sunshine. 

He gained the road, paused, and glanced right and 
left, irresolutely, every sense reveling in the scene. 
What should he do.?^ Methodical habits belonged to 
Pedro the least of the entire household. He went and 
came at all hours, and pouted if questioned as to his 
erratic excursions. Such meals as Noah’s Ark boasted 
were seldom shared by him. Sometimes he vanished 
for a week, and if sought by the grumbling Eric, was 
discovered haunting the footsteps of Captain Cox or 
abiding with Aunt Ellen, where the good lady and her 
handmaiden, Martha, petted him. 

Pedro clambered up a bank and entered a dell bor- 
dered by a high wall. He threw himself on the ground 
in a sudden whim of idleness. The spot was moist and 
cool. The wall, sawed out of the coral rock by con- 
victs in the time when Bermuda was a penal settlement 
had crumbled, softened in tone, and covered with moss. 
An air-plant clung in a thick mantle of foliage along 
the top of this boundary by means of jointed, fleshy 
stem and mauve-tinted leaves interspersed with flowers, 
like pale green bells. Ferns grew in every crevice up 


26 


A BERMUDA LILY 


to the summit of the boundary. Beyond was a tangled 
wealth of plantain and disheveled banana, orange 
trees, and the papaw, rising on a slender stem to a 
crown of foliage. 

Pedro’s glance sought the dome of verdure rising 
far above his head, and he plucked a tendril of the air- 
plant, which he bound around his brow. These leaves 
are deliciously cold to the touch and are esteemed a 
cure of headache by the negroes. Did some secret 
sympathy exist between the boy’s soul and all the forms 
of growth near him.? Prone on the path, he whispered 
childish secrets to the spirits hidden deep down in the 
earth, then laughed at his own silly conceits. Delicate 
mysteries of birth, development and decay were going 
on in the miniature world of the dell. The ferns formed 
a tiny tropical forest pressed close to his face, and he 
peopled this realm of emerald twilight with fairies and 
shadowy gods in a vague adaptation of symbolism. He 
knew that the plumule of the plants emerged from the 
seed in the soil, bent in the form of an arch, the tip 
still protected within the sheaf until such time as the 
young stem should yearn upward toward more air and 
light as unerringly as the roots strike down to dark- 
ness and moisture. What did the climbers teach him 
of perpetual scrambling and pushing one’s way out of 
the mere jungle herbage of coarse weeds and grass, 
mounting on the shoulders of convenient neighbors in 
the aim of attaining supremacy.? His eye traced the 
airy evolutions of swaying branches, moored in elastic 
cords to stouter supports, like Darwin’s bryony of the 
hedge attached to surrounding bushes that safely rode 
out the gale, even as a ship surges to the tempest with 
two anchors down and a long range of cable to serve 
as a spring. 


ARIEL 


27 


Pedro communed, in his own fashion, with the insect 
world trotting on a little round of domestic duties. He 
watched the ant population busy as miners and archi- 
tects in subterranean excavations, or serving as a stand- 
ing army to garrison the hollow spaces of stem and leaf 
of certain shrubs, ready to rush forth in eager defense 
against ruthless intrusion, their pay honey and nectar 
rations, furnished in gratitude by the flower citadel. 

The boy had no need to fear a spiteful sting of the 
scorpion on his half-clad limbs, as the venomous crea- 
ture does not thrive in the rocky isles, and has been 
known to languish on the docks when brought in a 
cargo of logwood. Neither would he be molested by 
serpents. The coral snake of Trinidad, the harmless 
Cribo, with its six or eight feet of black body marked 
with yellow, and the deadly Fer-de-lance, had not yet 
taken mysterious journeys as far as Bermuda, making a 
cradle for the deposit of eggs out of floating timber. 
No human reptile, Carib or African magician has cher- 
ished the deadly scheme of slaying the white man of 
Bermuda by launching the stealthy foe on these coral 
reefs, as is suspected at St. Lucia and Martinique. 

Pedro was familiar with the haunts of the centipede, 
under loose stones and in the crevices of masonry — 
ugly, sluggish, grey folk of uncanny aspect. He had 
even once adroitly caught an interesting, many-legged 
party in a handkerchief for a traveler. 

Thus the page of nature was outspread for the lad’s 
quick reading. He might fancy himself one of the tiny 
mosses or the lichens clothing the base of the wall. 
Equally well he could merge his own identity in the 
stately mahogany tree rising above the path, which 
had attained height and symmetry through the slow 
process of perfection in fifty years of growth, as the 


28 


A BERMUDA LILY 


natives of Sarawak and Samoa believe that certain 
mortals possess the power of changing into plants. 
Time had no especial value for him. He remembered 
that he had departed from a home in the south where 
the palms and ferns droop in heavier masses and the 
mangrove swamps form dark labyrinths. A mother 
had clasped him in her arms on board the burning ship. 
His present environment sufficed for all reasonable 
needs. 

A young man approached the dell. He was tall, and 
clad in the garb of a civilian. He walked with the alert 
bearing of health and energy, and carried several 
fronds of lady’s fern in his hand. Pedro observed him 
with the curiosity of the native of a secluded sphere 
who recognizes a stranger. 

The newcomer whistled, and even hummed a song, in 
sheer buoyancy of spirit. He enjoyed a ramble through 
these islands after a stormy voyage. He had strolled 
through dales and skirted marshes, noticing the absence 
of rills of water, as rain here sinks speedily into the 
porous rock. He seated himself on the wall, removed 
his hat and wiped his moistened brow. The shade was 
grateful after the heat of the sun. 

Lieutenant Henry Atherton of the Royal Engineers 
had not proved himself to be a good sailor during the 
run down from Halifax to Bermuda on board the Mag- 
nanimous. The fact had been made the subject of much 
jesting. A smile flitted across the features of the com- 
mander and expanded into hearty laughter on the part 
of the youngest midshipman when Lieutenant Atherton 
staggered on deck, most wretched of human beings. 
Why should the ludicrous ever clothe that serious ill of 
the flesh, mal de mer? The soldier, in the full enjoy- 
ment of health and an indolently amiable disposition, 


ARIEL 


29 


was suddenly plunged into a mood of gloom, despond- 
ency and abject physical weakness. Like the psalmist, 
his soul abhorred all manner of meat. Even his favorite 
pipe proved no solace in affliction, being, indeed, as 
Dead Sea fruit crumbling to ashes in his mouth. 
Grumbling was useless amidst the rush of the wind and 
the surging waves. Then, to render the situation more 
exasperating, his cousin. Commander Belfrage, in mo- 
ments of leisure, invited him to make other voyages with 
him at some future date, perchance around Cape Horn, 
to thread the Straits of Magellan, or even to essay the 
Bay of Biscay and the Gulf of Lyons in some cockleshell 
craft. 

Alfred Kirby paced the deck with his cap pressed 
down over his brow and a cigar held firmly between his 
lips. He was a good sailor and had spent many sum- 
mers yachting on the coast of Scotland and in the 
waters of Norway. This comrade had a brisk manner 
of diving below and accosting the landsman with the 
wish to cheer him up a bit, which was misplaced, not to 
say offensive, to a degree. 

“ Awfully jolly in the fresh air. Giant,” he would 
remark, with a twinkle in his sharp blue eyes. “ I fancy 
the gale is over.” 

Lieutenant Atherton, known as the Giant by reason 
of his herculean frame and muscle, prone on the sofa 
of the Commander’s cabin, would growl some curt 
response. 

The voyage was rough. The two young men, 
ordered to a new station, had crossed the Atlantic to 
Halifax on the mail packet and proceeded to Bermuda 
on the man-of-war at the invitation of the Commander, 
instead of coming out on the troop-ship. Inseparable 
companions, and wholly unlike in character as well as 


30 


A BERMUDA LILY 


personal appearance, save for a certain boyish anima- 
tion of mere physical enjoyment, Alfred Kirby and 
Henry Atherton had formed one of those early friend- 
ships which unite youth in school and college. These 
friendships frequently endure to the end, but are often 
severed by marriage. 

The Magnanimous sailed from Halifax for the West 
Indies in the hazy weather of a November day. The 
ship speedily became the sport of the elements. Dense 
fog gathered from mist, and was succeeded by chilling 
rain. An iceberg loomed menacingly near, with glist- 
ening pinnacles overtopping the masts, and a crystal 
rampart hemming in advance until a mighty billow 
sunk huge blocks, and set the vessel free. The barom- 
eter fell and the wind veered to every quarter in succes- 
sion, running riot over the deep. 

The Magnanimous held on steadily by means of 
steam, although unable to make more than three knots 
an hour. The gale prevailed for a day, and to the 
young soldiers, at critical moments, it seemed that no 
efforts of human skill and bravery could withstand the 
fury of the tempest. The frigate lay on the starboard 
side so heavily as to threaten to force in the gun ports. 
Captain Kirby clung to any chance support while wave 
after wave swept the deck. Lieutenant Atherton, his 
brain stunned and confused, felt himself now swung 
high in the air, and again plunged into dark abysses of 
engulfing wastes, from which it seemed problematical 
that he would emerge in safety. He listened in dismay 
to all sounds, the trumpet note of command, the hur- 
ried tramp of feet of the sailors on duty. Possibly he 
would not have been surprised had the voices gathered 
into the despairing cry : “ To prayers ! To prayers 1 
All lost!” 


ARIEL 


31 


In wrathful moods the Atlantic Ocean is unchanging. 
Since the Governor of Bermuda, Sir George Somers, 
conducted his little fleet out from England to the new 
colonies, and wrote : “ The clouds began to thicken 
around, and a dreadful storm commenced from the 
northeast, which, swelling and roaring as it were by 
fits, at length seemed to extinguish all the light of 
heaven, and leave utter darkness. The blackness of 
the sky and the howling of the winds were such as to 
inspire the boldest of our men with terror, for the dread 
of death is always most terrible at sea, as no situation 
is so entirely destitute of comfort or relief as one of 
danger here.” 

One morning Lieutenant Atherton had staggered on 
deck. The storm had lulled, the air was soft and fra- 
grant, as if a branch of blossoms were laid across his 
face in a gracious welcome of earth to a wretched sailor. 
He lounged against the bulwark and gazed dreamily 
at the green hills and islets which comprise the Somers 
Archipelago. 

“ I have promised to send home some Bermuda 
ferns,” he said. 

Commander Belfrage observed him with his slight, 
grim smile. “ ‘ Now would I give a thousand furlongs 
of sea for an acre of barren ground,’ ” he quoted slyly. 

Pedro rose to his feet, plucked a spray of the air- 
plant from the wall, wound it into a wreath and placed 
it on the head of the stranger with a smile. 

“ Nice and cool for headache,” he explained, press- 
ing the thick, fleshy leaves against the young man’s 
temples. “Just like ice.” 

The new arrival stared in surprise at the intruder, 
then readily assented: “ Jolly and cool! What is it.? ” 

Pedro vouchsafed no adequate botanical explana- 


32 


A BERMUDA LILY 


tion of the beneficent qualities of the air-plant. “ Al- 
ways like that,” he said, vaguely. “ I know where the 
ferns are better than these.” 

“Where?” inquired Henry Atherton. 

“ All about our cave,” said Pedro. 

“ And where may your cave be situated, little nig- 
ger? ” 

“ I am not a nigger,” retorted Pedro with indigna- 
tion. 

“ Young colored gentleman, then,” mocked the Lieu- 
tenant. 

The boy regarded his interlocutor with surprise and 
anger; a dark flush passed over his mobile features, 
and tears of mortification came to his eyes. Probably 
he was thus associated, carelessly, for the first time. 
He found the insult unbearable. 

The young man did not perceive or understand his 
vexation. “ I will give you a shilling if you can find 
some nice ferns,” he continued, searching in his pocket 
for the coin. “ I wish to send them to England. 
Fancy! What a long journey for your Bermuda 
ferns.” 

“ I don’t want your money,” frowned Pedro. 

“ Oh, yes you do, though,” said the officer in his 
habitual tone of banter. “ Shillings are very well, and 
keep the world spinning, my child. Now I daresay you 
know the difference between Blechnum serrulatum, 
Pteris podophylla and all the various species of film 
ferns, but I am blessed if I can tell them apart.” 

“ No,” said Pedro, wonderingly, and spurned the 
silver coin with his foot. 

“ Is your cave near? ” the Lieutenant pursued with 
unruffled good humor. “ I am search of the very finest 


ARIEL 


S3 


specimens of ferns for some ladies. Take me to your 
place.” 

“ Over yonder we live,” Pedro responded, sulkily, 
and indicated the low range of shore. “ You can walk 
there or use the boat. I came in the boat this time.” 

“ Very good. Let us try the boat, by all means.” 

A sudden gleam of mirth and malice rippled over the 
lad’s countenance. He picked up the shilling with the 
curt assent : “ Come along, then.” 

He sprang into the boat and kicked off his shoes as 
he took the oars. The officer seated himself in the 
stern, indolently, and smoked his pipe while he con- 
templated the scene. The transit was nearly accom- 
plished and the rocks of the opposite promontory 
gained when the boat was suddenly overturned, and 
the two occupants struggling in the water. 

“ Oh, the shark ! The shark — down there ! ” cried 
Pedro as he struck out for the shore. 

The shock was so unexpected and the plunge into the 
sea so cold that the young man scarcely realized what 
had happened. Natural presence of mind, or the mere 
instinct of self-preservation, made him swim in the 
direction taken by the boy on rising again to the sur- 
face after a first immersion. His progress was slow, 
as he was encumbered with clothes, walking shoes and a 
hat. However, the distance to land was short. Pedro, 
adroitly cleaving his way, uttered cries, shrill lamenta- 
tions and elfin screeches, a clamor calculated to alarm 
an entire household. 

“ Save us ! Oh, do help us ! The boat — the boat 
may drift out to sea! What moves there under the 
rocks ? A shark I ” 

The officer was grimly silent. He was confusedly 
conscious, with foam blinding his eyes and surging in 


34 


A BERMUDA LILY 


his ears, that Pedro had scrambled up the bank and 
stood shivering and dripping, as a strong current 
swept him on. Did a stealthy monster of a shark 
actually lurk in wait in the depths below? He had no 
time even to think of a fresh danger. He exerted all 
his strength to battle with the current and gain land 
in turn. There was an upward swell of a wave, grind- 
ing him against the rocks, a piercing thrill of pain 
through arm and shoulder, and then sudden darkness 
of unconsciousness. 


CHAPTER IV 


A MIRANDA 

That night Lieutenant Atherton found himself ex- 
tended on a bed in a whitewashed cottage situated on 
an isolated spot of the shore. The place was the abode 
of strangers. His mood was one of acute wakefulness. 
His reclining posture was one of constraint by reason 
of a dislocated shoulder and bruised left arm. The 
surgeon of the garrison had paid him a visit, accom- 
panied by Captain Kirby. The condition of the in- 
jured youth admitted removal to barracks, a measure 
urged by the surgeon, but the host insisted on the 
patient’s remaining beneath his roof for a few days. 
The surgeon consented, and promised to return in the 
morning. 

The greeting of Captain Kirby was cheerful and 
characteristic : “ I say, old man, what an idiot you 
are ! In search of ferns, eh ? ” 

“ I seem to be rather down on my luck in coming 
to Bermuda,” was the doleful response. 

Left alone to his own meditations, the young man 
was disposed to make light of the mishap which had 
befallen him. As a soldier, he was prepared to bivouac 
anywhere, and a night or two spent in a semi-tropical 
civilian’s house need not be deemed unusual. He had 
slept in many out-of-the-way and primitive places in 
his life. His mother, a pretty and graceful Irish 
woman of good family and restricted income, had dwelt 
chiefly on the continent during his boyhood, now join- 
35 


36 


A BERMUDA LILY 


ing one of the British colonies of French towns, and 
again haunting German resorts until the son was en- 
tered at Woolwich. Thus the child, indulged during 
the loneliness of early widowhood, became a companion 
and cavalier in boyhood, scaling the mountain heights 
of Austria, the Tyrol and Switzerland, chatting with 
shepherds, goatherds and innkeepers with the facile 
adaptation of the young. He was a thorough cosmo- 
politan in picking up dialects and customs. The choice 
of a military career by his guardian had alone rescued 
Henry Atherton from becoming one of those exiled 
idlers of the Anglo-Saxon race who frequent Roman 
salons and the clubs of Nice, Dinard and Pau. 

The officer’s eyes roamed about the modest little 
chamber where he now reposed. A lamp burned in 
a sheltered corner, protected by a shade of green paper. 
The window was partially open to admit a current of 
fresh air, and the sound of the sea was borne to his ear 
in loud rushes of swelling billows, which died away, at 
intervals, to half-articulate sounds such as furnished a 
rhythm to the rapid transition of thought in the list- 
ener. This music of the murmuring deep should have 
wooed healthy nerves to repose. How often he had 
occupied a similar little box of a room, in a chalet, the 
hospice of an Alpine summit, or French school! 

Now a horrible shape appeared on the white wall, a 
gigantic spider with a hairy body and formidable legs, 
both exaggerated in size by the shadow cast by the 
lamp. Doubtless from a spider standpoint, the taran- 
tula was beautiful, with a velvet pile covering a greyish- 
black body, and strong, muscular, crab-like claws grop- 
ing along the partition as if in search of prey. The 
officer viewed it with a first impulse of quite creepy, 
human aversion, especially as the bandages he wore 


A MIRANDA 


37 


rendered him too much a prisoner to spring up readily 
and crush the unwelcome intruder. 

The spider paused and remained outspread in a mo- 
tionless posture, as if meditating on the best course to 
pursue. The man’s gaze was fixed on the insect, while 
the sea murmured in his ear, and gradually his thoughts 
turned elsewhere. A girl’s face, fresh and fair, arose 
before his mind of all the impressions of that day. He 
had been idly smoking his pipe in the stern of the boat 
moving swiftly over the waters, propelled by an imp 
of a boy, when a violent shock had sent him into the sea. 
To recover breath and equilibrium sufficiently to swim 
to the shore, with the cries of Pedro warning him of the 
lurking shark, had taxed all his muscles. When the 
wave flung him on the rock with violence, a small, firm 
hand had grasped and held his own, and a girl’s face, 
sympathetic and intent, looked down on him from the 
bank. Masculine aid had indeed withdrawn him from 
peril, a gray-bearded man of slender strength, an un- 
couth sailor, and two negroes; but the girl had re- 
mained at his side, helpful in all feminine attentions 
and even assisting in such first cares of the wounded 
as her father had been able to bestow before the arrival 
of the surgeon. Her solicitude had been the electric 
current permeating the events of the day, and her 
supervision was apparent in all subsequent measures. 
He was conveyed to the little chamber and propped 
up with pillows in a recumbent posture. What could 
be more natural than this first experience of a senti- 
mental character at Bermuda.? He was used to smiles 
from girls. The fact that a fresh study of maidenhood 
was associated with the present accident lent a charm 
to the situation. 

He laughed softly, a trifle fatuously, to himself. 


38 


A BERMUDA LILY 


Of course he was expected to walk on a very straight 
path now, and Kirby would be sure to keep an eye on 
him as a sort of mentor. What a dry stick of a woman- 
hater Alfred was, to be sure! As for himself, impulse 
might sway him, pendulum-wise, from duty to all the 
delicious wiles of inclination. He was desperately in 
love with Mabel; but then Mabel was far away. 

The head thrown back on the pillow was charming, 
with a well-formed brow, delicately arched eyebrows 
shading pleasant and frank grey eyes, the face richly 
colored with health, the lips full, yet harmoniously 
curved under a silky military moustache, and a round, 
white chin, cleft by a dimple. The most beautiful fea- 
ture of a countenance which was neither weak nor eflPem- 
inate, perhaps by reason of the large stature of the 
youth, was a short, finely-cut nose of a Greek type. 

Physiognomists still trace the Greek nose through 
the wide ranges of modern degenerate humanity, and 
when they find it amidst all the coarsely fashioned, up- 
turned and irregular appendages of the nations of 
earth, they accord artistic refinement, amiability, if 
surroundings are agreeable, and a more or less supine 
holding aloof from strife, reform or discord to the 
owner. 

The spider lifted one leg tentatively in the air and 
crawled an inch nearer to a small table beside the bed, 
on which were placed a glass of sherry, biscuit and a 
cooling draught prepared by the surgeon. 

“ Hello I ” soliloquized the invalid, observing the 
tarantula uneasily. “ The beast seems quite tame. 
Possibly it is coming to the bed to make my acquaint- 
ance. Ugh! I fancy it wishes to drink the sherry, 
though.” 

He moved his free hand, and the tarantula once more 


A MIRANDA 


39 


halted in the journey of discovery along the wall and 
seemed to ponder anew on the situation. The prisoner 
had a cane placed within reach to employ if in need of 
assistance, and tap on the floor. He did not wish to 
disturb a family to make war on a spider. 

“ Looks like the bogey of a nightmare after a Christ- 
mas dinner,” mused Henry Atherton, and his thoughts 
wandered while he actually watched the tactics of the 
enemy. 

A girl’s face! Awakened interest in the household 
upon whose good will he was unexpectedly cast was 
wholly due to the gracious vision of Bertha bending 
over him as he struggled in the water. Who were these 
people.'^ How did they happen to be dwelling here.? 
Evidently the father was a German ; possibly an eccen- 
tric recluse. He rather liked German frauleins. They 
were often arch, pretty and amusing. 

The cottage was not wholly tranquil and wrapped in 
slumber, even at a late hour. His ear noted movements 
below stairs, whispered consultations on the landing 
outside of the door of his room, and even more distant 
sounds. He glanced at his watch on the table, wearily, 
and ascertained that it was two o’clock. A footstep 
went and came on the path beneath his window with 
mechanical regularity. The master of the house was 
late abroad. Half-suppressed soliloquies, abrupt ex- 
clamations, even a dreary yawn, reached the officer. 
Then a voice repeated slowly, and in a musical tone: 

“ He that ohserveth the wind shall not sow; he that 
watcheth the clouds shall not reap.*' 

The effect of the words coming in the casement in 
the darkness of night was strange, even lugubrious. 
The youthful optimism of the listener speedily dis- 
carded warnings thus : “ The father is an odd stick, I 


40 


A BERMUDA LILY 


fancy. Is he a parson, by chance A Lutheran, pos- 
sibly; a Mennonite, or one of the Herrnhute brethren. 
He may be a sort of Albertus Magnus, or a Roger 
Bacon. Who knows if he learned to make gold in a 
crucible, hidden in the depths of the Black Forest be- 
fore he came to Bermuda. Let us hope he will dismiss 
me with his blessing and the gift of a purse of such 
fairy gold.” 

Here the spider moved, and appeared to stretch 
itself in all its horny length of jointed members, as if 
awakening from a nap, after which it advanced 
stealthily and rapidly. The young man seized the cane 
with a gesture of repulsion and made a lunge at the 
insect, in an attempt to crush it against the wall. Af- 
fronted by such rudeness the tarantula ran down the 
wainscot and disappeared. 

“ All right ! ” exclaimed the officer in a more drowsy 
tone. 

The sea sang its monotonous cradle-song, and this 
grown child, yielding submissively and gratefully to 
the cadence, finally slept. Blessed oblivion of sound 
slumber, untroubled by dread of the unknown! The 
surges beat on the Bermuda reef through the hours 
of darkness. Did the blended voices of the deep sing 
a requiem of infinite sadness.? 


CHAPTER V 


THE STING OF A REMEMBRANCE 

The unforeseen intrusion of a stranger had thrown 
the household into confusion. Sleep did not visit the 
pillow of the young mistress of the cottage, while Ever- 
hard was restless, walking about the premises, indoors 
and out. For the first time in her life, Bertha, the 
improvident housekeeper, was required to think of the 
morrow with anxiety. How should she provide for the 
entertainment of such a guest as the young officer.? 
Oh, what if the friend and the surgeon stayed to 
luncheon or dinner when they came to visit him, in 
addition.? The grace of hospitality was apt to sit 
lightly on the spirit of the father. He might now ex- 
pect a fairy banquet to be spread at his bidding and 
served by Pedro and herself at a moment’s notice. 
What was to be done.? Aunt Ellen dwelt too far away 
to fly even a signal of distress in hopes of moving her 
housewifely sympathies. Neither telegraph nor tele- 
phone existed to aid in such an emergency. In the 
small hours before dawn all the cracked dishes, chipped 
teacups and glasses, and disreputable, mended table- 
cloths and napkins of her menage arose in judgment 
and confronted the guilty hostess. 

A practical point of view thus balanced the romantic 
in the mind of the young girl. Her imagination was 
charmed by the arrival of a handsome stranger thrown 
on her care. She had witnessed the shipwreck, in mini- 
ature, from the shore, whither the grumbling com- 
41 


42 


A BERMUDA LILY 


plaints of Eric had attracted both her father and her- 
self, as the hours passed and Pedro did not return with 
the boat. She had been the first to descry the culprit 
in the act of quitting the opposite bank, and noted 
the surprising fact that he had a passenger on board. 
Who could the visitor be.? He bore no sort of resem- 
blance to Captain Cox. She was wholly unconscious 
of herself in the subsequent aid she rendered. Later, a 
negro messenger had been sent to the barracks of the 
Royal Engineers with a card on which Lieutenant Ath- 
erton had hastily scrawled a line to his friend. Captain 
Kirby, who had promptly responded by bringing the 
surgeon. 

Alas ! Bertha’s worst fears were realized in the 
morning. Captain Kirby and the surgeon arrived be- 
times and cheerfully accepted Everhard’s invitation to 
remain to lunch. 

The invalid’s voice was plainly audible through the 
precincts of the cottage in response to the greeting of 
the newcomers : “ I am as hungry as a wolf. Must I 
be starved as a part of the cure.? ” 

Bertha and Pedro gazed at each other in consterna- 
tion. She feared that the cup of chocolate, prepared 
with care, had proved unpalatable, and the toast smoky, 
served at the young man’s breakfast. The boy, after 
anxious consultation concerning the least battered 
forks and spoons to place before the guests, concealed 
defects of napery by filling the table with plants, great 
branches of coleus, flanked by crotons ruthlessly rooted 
up for the occasion, and bunches of ferns. 

“ When they see the flowers they won’t feel so hun- 
gry,” he suggested, hopefully. 

Bertha patted his cheek. He laughed, showing 
small white teeth. She was ignorant of the prank 


THE STING OF A REMEMBRANCE 4B 


played by him the previous day, in upsetting the boat. 

“ You find yourselves in a bachelor’s establishment,” 
said the host. “ My daughter is still a mere child.” 

The surgeon was a family man. He noticed Bertha’s 
flushed and perturbed countenance, and praised the fish 
sent by a kind Providence to Eric’s net at an earlier 
hour. The excellent man found occasion to relieve a 
somewhat constrained pause in the conversation by 
quoting Sydney Smith’s reply to the invitation to dine 
of the London fishmonger’s, some eighty years ago, 
in which the hon vivant expressed an anticipatory satis- 
faction in eating the monsters of the deep, whether rosy 
salmon, smelts born for frying, or the flaky cod. Pedro 
uncorked a bottle of Allsop’s pale ale with sudden 
violence and placed it before the visitors. In response 
to Bertha’s glance of surprise and gratitude, the lad 
whispered : “ I stole the beer from Eric.” 

As if in atonement of his malice of the previous day, 
he brought a box of the Captain’s Havana cigars and 
a small silver tray, furnished with tiny glasses, and a 
flask of Curacoa. 

At ten o’clock of the evening of this second day a 
woman suddenly appeared on the threshold of the door 
of the house. She was a sable apparition, for her 
round, fat, black face was framed in a widow’s bonnet 
of exceeding respectability, while a cashmere shawl cov- 
ered her shoulders. She carried on her arm a bandbox 
of ample dimensions and covered with a flowered paper, 
purple and grey in hue. Bertha, who had been kneel- 
ing beside her father’s chair, discussing the events of 
the day with animation, arose to her feet, uttered a 
smothered shriek, ran to the newcomer and flung her 
arms around her neck. 

The dusky countenance of the recipient of these 


A BERMUDA LILY 


44 

effusions expanded into a genial smile, revealing strong 
white teeth. She nodded at Everhard. 

“ Oh, you dear old creature, to come over and help 
me ! ” exclaimed Bertha. 

“ La, chile ! Here I am, sure enough,” retorted the 
negress in a mellow voice. “ Your aunty, she couldn’t 
come nohow, so she sent me along with some things. 
Lord amassy ! What a pickle you must be with 
visitors ! ” 

“ Bertha, have you sent to your Aunt Ellen ? ” inter- 
posed Everhard, frowning. 

“ Sam was going over there,” murmured Bertha 
with a look of deprecation. “ Martha is a clever nurse, 
papa.” 

“ Don’t you trouble about me, sah,” said the visitor. 

The inmates of the cottage slept that night with a 
sense of security and well being in the presence of this 
humble black woman. Later she pervaded the place 
noiselessly, clad in a cotton gown and with a turban 
replacing the widow’s bonnet on her head. Ample in 
person, her movements were most supple and undulat- 
ing; she had the velvet footstep of a panther. 

Martha entered the room of Henry Atherton with- 
out arousing him. She rearranged the shade of the 
lamp and lightly touched the pulse of the hand ex- 
tended on the coverlet, to detect fever. Then she 
paused, with knitted brow, and contemplated the young 
man. 

‘‘ It is not a lucky face,” she mused, shaking her head. 

The tarantula crawled along the wall. The chamber 
was a favorite haunt. The negress swept her black 
hand over the insect, captured, and consigned it to the 
depths of the capacious pocket of her gown. Then she 
glided away again like a shadow. 


THE STING OF A REMEMBRANCE 45 


If Lieutenant Atherton found his poached eggs and 
anchovy toast served with a tempting delicacy which 
invited appetite next morning, he doubtless attributed 
the circumstance, with true masculine heedlessness, to 
convalescence. Still less did the surgeon associate the 
beaming face of the young hostess over a well-spread 
table, boasting dishes compounded of the native arrow- 
root and cassava, miracles of lightness and crispness, 
with the black Mammy who aided him so deftly with 
bandage and sponge. 

“ Where did you learn to be such a good nurse ? ” 
the surgeon had demanded. 

Martha chuckled. “ Reckon it’s in my bones to be a 
nurse, sah. I’ve lived with Doctor Russell all my bom 
days.” 

No wonder Bertha had slept with a smile on her lips. 
Martha whispered in her ear : 

“ I’ve brought a can of condensed milk, chile. You 
may do a sight o’ things in the kitchen with a little 
milk, in no time. La ! You don’t happen to keep many 
cows out here. Do you? Ha! ha! ha! I jest put all 
de victuals I could find into de basket. Dere’s a bit of 
cold fowl for some of my sandwiches. Young gemmen 
find ’em easy eating with his arm tied up, I shouldn’t 
wonder.” 

“ Oh, you dear old Martha ! How I love you ! ” 
sighed Bertha. 

She was relieved, restored to self-confidence, yet her 
conscience upbraided her for the soiled condition of the 
best tablecloth. 

The host, on the contrary, was annoyed by family 
sympathy, and betrayed his displeasure. Martha had 
much childish vanity in her own benignant usefulness 
to her fellow creatures, and finally took umbrage at 


46 


A BERMUDA LILY 


the bearing of Everhard. She tossed her head, put on 
the widow’s bonnet once more, packed the bandbox, 
and summoned Pedro to drive her to the ferry in the 
little wagon, drawn by the grey donkey. 

“ Very well ! Let her go,” said Everhard with per- 
ceptible irritation in his tone. “ It is quite time she 
returned to her other duties. Indeed, I fail to under- 
stand why your Aunt Ellen should interfere in our 
affairs.” 

“ Oh, papa, just this time,” pleaded Bertha, on the 
verge of tears. 

“ When I come again I’ll be needed drefful bad,” 
said Martha, huffily, and speaking with a prophetic wis- 
dom, of which she was vaguely conscious with the 
strange prescience of her race. She glanced back at the 
cottage as she seated herself in the little wagon and 
repeated, menacingly: “Yes; I’ll be wanted drefful 
bad when I come again ! ” The boy Pedro looked at 
her askance beneath heavy eyelids, and shuddered 
slightly. 

Henry Atherton, the object of general solicitude, 
speedily emerged from his prison cell of a narrow 
chamber to which the accident had confined him. The 
young man’s bearing was affable, even gay. He 
allowed Pedro and Bertha to minister to his wants, 
and conversed with his host on a variety of topics, 
chiefly in German. 

Bertha received the stamp of the most indelible brain 
picture of her life during the afternoon hour before the 
departure of their guest. The officer lounged in an 
arm-chair outside of the door of the house, and she 
leaned against the wall listening in silence, after filling 
the pipes of the two men, while Pedro brought a harvest 
of ferns, gathered in the neighborhood, possibly as an 


THE STING OF A REMEMBRANCE 47 


act of atonement. The girl stole timid glances at the 
stranger, who, in turn, frequently looked at her in 
responding easily to Everhard’s remarks. Yes, he had 
been much in foreign countries, especially Germany, 
and had done some mountain climbing of Mount Blanc, 
about Grindelwald and the St. Gothard range. 

“ Have you ever tried the Dolomites ? ” Everhard 
inquired, casually. 

“Yes; and you.'^ ” rejoined Henry Atherton. 

The host smiled and watched the smoke curl upward 
from his pipe. “ I have stretched my legs through that 
country, like other young men,” he said. 

Bertha had been reared to consider the austere 
grandeur of the mountain world with envy, having 
never seen a peak in her life. She bent forward, 
clasped her hands together and murmured : “ Oh, talk 
about the mountains, papa ! ” 

Everhard laughed. “ My daughter has no idea of 
a height more considerable than the mole hill where the 
lighthouse stands. She likes to dream of the Alps and 
the Andes.” 

The Lieutenant observed her with increased sym- 
pathy. 

“ Doubtless you have visited the Vorarlberg,” con- 
tinued the host after a pause. 

“ Rather,” said the officer, lapsing into English. 

“ Then you have seen snow peaks, and the glaciers 
flowing down to the rivers, and all those castles once 
occupied by the bishops and warrior knights ! ” ex- 
claimed Bertha with youthful enthusiasm. 

Henry Atherton gazed at her with pleased atten- 
tion. If he wished to interest this maiden he must seek 
to describe the Finsterwald and the Vorder Rhine. 

“ You know the Glausenberg and the Utleberg, and 


48 


A BERMUDA LILY 


the home of the Reichtenstein, possibly,” said Everhard, 
quietly. 

“ I once spent a month near the Castle of Reichten- 
stein,” said Henry Atherton, promptly, with an eye 
on a fair listener. “ We used to go up there and sketch 
and buy fresh eggs to drink out of the shell, of the old 
custodian. Jolly old place, Schloss Reichtenstein, 
romantic and all that sort of thing, where the wolves 
prowl among the fallen leaves in winter, and ghosts 
walk about the corridors at midnight, I should say.” 

Everhard breathed heavily, then coughed. “ What 
do you tell me.^ You have been there ” he demanded, 
sharply. 

“ I know the place well,” retorted the officer. “ I 
could sketch it for you if I had a stray sheet of paper.” 

“ How good of you to think of it ! ” said Bertha, 
beaming with gratitude. 

“ No ! ” interposed her father, hastily. “ I do not 
need a picture to remind me of Schloss Richtenstein.” 

“You have been there, dear papa?” questioned 
Bertha in blithe tones. 

Everhard stared at his companions in turn as if he 
did not see them. “ I have been there — when I was 
young,” he replied, slowly. 

He recovered his habitual composure, threw back his 
head and laughed. “ Wolves in winter, and ghosts, eh? 
But if you purloined the fresh eggs what did the lord 
of the castle have to say ? ” 

“ Oh, nobody lived there, I fancy. The custodian 
showed a collection of medals, historical portraits and 
spinning-wheels, you know. There was some tale about 
a former Countess having been wicked and extravagant, 
and the present Count eating up all his property with 
play at Vienna, and mortgages. Stay! Is that the 


THE STING OF A REMEMBRANCE 49 


history of Balder, or some keep of Meinhard of Tyrol, 
instead? 

Everhard arose and slightly shrugged his shoulders. 
“ The traditions of mediaeval strongholds are similar 
and strung together by the custodians for the benefit 
of visitors,” he said, advancing to greet Captain Kirby, 
who arrived at this moment. 

“ You nearly did for me that time, little African,” 
said Lieutenant Atherton, slipping a gold piece into 
Pedro’s palm. 

“ Foot caught, and boat went over as easy as could 
be,” said the boy. 

“ Please don’t ! ” urged Bertha. “ Pedro is not used 
to— gold.” 

“ May I come again and look over some German 
classics with you? ” pleaded the youth with a Greek 
nose of the father, while seeking assent in the frank 
smile of the daughter. 

“ The German is quite a gentleman,” was his com- 
ment to his friend as he drove away, laden with ferns. 

Captain Kirby lighted a cigar in silence. 

“ The daughter is very pretty,” added Lieutenant 
Atherton, meditatively. 

“ Not especially good looking,” was the dry retort. 
“ She is not a pure black, if you like.” 

“ A black? She is a blonde fraulein.” 

“ Possibly.” 

The laughter of Pedro, mocking, yet sweet, floated 
after them. 

That night Everhard paced the garden paths for 
hours. Then he entered the house, seated himself at a 
desk and began to write on a large sheet of paper. 

My Dear Child: 

“ There are more things in this world than are 


50 


A BERMUDA LILY 


dreamed of in your philosophy, as you sleep above 
stairs. What do you know of life beyond the range of 
your Aunt Ellen^s cassava puddings? I write this letter 
for you to read after my death, for, in reason, you will 
survive me. I doubt the wisdom of the measure. What 
does it all matter? If that young man had not come 
here I should have wholly neglected the task.*' 

He dipped his pen afresh in the ink and paused, hold- 
ing it suspended over the page. A frown of weariness 
and defection contracted his brow. After all, should 
he complete the missive or tear it up.? 


CHAPTER VI 


IN A CAVE 

‘‘ I PROMISED to crack some Brazil nuts and give you 
a sweet-sop if you would only come to the cave.” 

“ Oh, Pedro, you naughty child ! Where did you 
get Brazil nuts ? ” 

“ Captain gave ’em to me. Really ! ” 

“ And the sweet-sop ? ” 

“ I just came along by the garden of Rose Hill, got 
over the wall, and took some.” 

“ Then it is all in the family, I suppose. You wish 
for a story. What a tease ! I have no more stories in 
my brain.” 

“ Just one little story,” coaxed the boy. 

Bertha and Pedro were seated in a chamber hollowed 
out of the limestone by the action of the sea. It was a 
retreat close at hand, yet full of the witchery of mys- 
tery to the youthful mind, tenanted in dim recesses by 
marvelous shapes, terrible, beautiful or grotesque, ac- 
cording to the fancy of the hour. The vaulted roof 
was in shadow, with gleams of frosted white stalactites 
visible here and there, while a stalagmite rose in the 
slow accretion of years in a pool of shallow water in 
the center. The ledges took labyrinthine turns further 
back in obscurity. The arch of entrance was sheltered 
by a mass of foliage. Adjacent trees were draped with 
clinging sprays of jasmine vines, the sinister ivy-bush, 
dreaded by the negroes, grew near, and ferns formed 
a curtain. Maiden and boy were seated on the smooth 

51 


A BERMUDA LILY 


5 £ 

white floor of the cavern, which seemed to have been 
scooped by the action of the waves to a hard surface 
in the mid-space between the entrance and sheet of 
water. Pedro delighted in utilizing the nooks and cavi- 
ties of the place as a sort of storehouse in which to hide 
his treasures. He now spread a feast on Bertha’s 
pocket-handkerchief, tablecloth-wise, with childish glee. 
Usually indulgent to his caprices, she allowed him to 
make a little pile of the nuts, cracking them with a 
sharp bit of stone, one by one, and accepted the green- 
ish-hued, pulpy fruit, the sweet-sop, brought home for 
her especial delectation by this youthful marauder. 
Bertha’s glance strayed to the opening of the cave and 
she lapsed into soft reveries, while her companion ate 
his nuts and talked in a desultory and confidential 
fashion. The arch of rock made a frame for the pic- 
ture of clear sky, and fern tendrils quivering in the 
slightest stirring of the atmosphere as they hung in a 
curtain of delicate green lace between the girl and the 
radiant outer world, where a butterfly hovered on vel- 
vety wings, or a bird flashed past with a ripple of warm 
red on the plumage, in more rapid flight. 

Truly, Lavater might have found about this Ber- 
muda cave that each leaf is a world, each particle of 
matter an immensity, and each insect an inexplicable 
compendium. 

Bertha’s thoughts wandered further than these sur- 
roundings. Where was the. young man who had dwelt 
beneath their roof for several days in such an unex- 
pected manner.? Who was he.? She longed to know 
more of him, with the finest and most lively feminine 
curiosity. She had never seen a youth at all resembling 
him in her life. How handsome he was with that noble 
pose of the head ! How amiable and patient he was as 


IN A CAVE 


their guest ! She could not have defined the reason, 
but a natural courtesy of a simple and unaffected kind 
was, to her whole temperament, like rain to a flower. 
The commendation of her father had much influence on 
her. In harmony with a pleased, even astonished, first 
impression on the part of the maiden, the praises of 
Everhard swayed his daughter as a reed is bent by the 
advancing wind. The transient surface sentiment of 
surprise and enjoyment in the meeting with the young 
officer would have been readily apparent to older and 
wiser eyes than those of Bertha. The exile received 
fresh tidings of the outer world and his own country 
from a new arrival who spoke his native tongue with 
unusual fluency. Self-consciousness formed no element 
of the awakening womanhood of Bertha. A natural 
coquetry would have been the responsive touch to this 
subtle thrill of novel emotions. What impression had 
she made on the heart of the young man.?^ Did he find 
her pretty, pleasing and attractive? But Bertha, with 
her free, half boyish training, as companion of her 
father, had no such swift development of a personal 
vanity. She did not consider herself in the matter at 
all, except to blush in secret for the mistakes of her own 
haphazard hospitality, which those critics of her modest 
sphere. Aunt Ellen Russell and the womenkind of Uncle 
Samuel Cox’s family would not have failed to condemn. 
Now she watched and waited for the return of the 
stranger with eager impatience. Surely he would pay 
them another visit after his recovery. He had prom- 
ished to do so. The passing days, one succeeding the 
other with all the tranquil elements of fine weather, 
seemed full of sweet promise of possibilities, swift sur- 
prises and unforeseen situations enacted by Bertha in 
her meditations almost as naively as Pedro played his 


54 


A BERMUDA LILY 


pranks on everyone. Her being trembled in this new 
atmosphere of life as the fronds of the sensitive plants, 
clinging to the rock at the entrance of the cave quiv- 
ered and swayed in the sunlight. Pedro sighed and 
tossed away the shell of the last nut. 

“ Oh, I do love you when you are nice, and tell me 
stories,” he said, possessing himself of one of Bertha’s 
hands and kissing it with sudden fervor. 

She aroused herself from reverie, and gave him an 
admonitory and maternal tap on his soft, dusky cheek 
with her finger. 

“ When I am a man grown I will work for you, 
missy, and take care of you,” the boy pursued. 

“ You will never be a man,” she said, half-absently. 

“Why not.^” He arose and stamped his foot on 
the ground. His usually veiled and indolent expres- 
sion changed to one of helpless wrath, wonder, even 
swift pain, and he glanced around as if seeking some- 
thing. 

“ I cannot think of you as old and wise, but only as 
a little lad running about,” she replied. “ Don’t be 
vexed. I believe you have all kinds of treasures stored 
away in this cave as a sort of museum.” 

Pedro smiled with restored amiability, nodded, and 
bent towards his playfellow. 

“ There are so many nooks and corners,” he whis- 
pered. “ I bring things and hide ’em. I need some 
matches and a candle to search for a lot, sometimes.” 

He darted away down a side passage and returned 
with a dried fruit of the gru-gru palm, which is sup- 
posed to possess the virtues of a talisman by negroes. 
He displayed sharks’ teeth strung together in the form 
of a bracelet; the kernel of a Demerara snake nut 
coiled in the shape of a serpent, as a charm; and a 


IN A CAVE 


55 


mandrake root, curiously like the human form, to which 
the quality of averting misfortune is ascribed, like the 
ginseng of China and Corea. 

“ Will you hang one around your neck, just for good 
luck, missy ? ” suggested the boy, gaily. 

Bertha pushed the trinket aside. Pedro insisted. 

“ Let us each wear one to-day, because we don’t 
know what may happen.” 

Superstition was aroused in the breast of Bertha. 
The most precious amulet of antiquity, Hebrew, Egyp- 
tian or Gnostic, would have failed to move her at an- 
other time. She now submitted to the whim and suf- 
fered the lad to fasten the snake-nut to her throat by 
the cord, while he wore the gru-gru charm. 

“We must hide them so that nobody will know,” 
he said, slipping the talisman beneath the collar of his 
jacket with all a boy’s delightful sense of importance 
in having a secret. 

“ Now I am ready for the story,” he concluded, once 
more seating himself on the ground. 

Bertha reflected a moment, then began in a monoto- 
nous voice: 

“ Once there was a sun-goddess. She was very 
beautiful, and adored by all, because she made the light. 
The trees grew and the flowers bloomed when she 
smiled. She lived far away in Japan, or the Spice 
Islands of the East. One day she got angry with her 
lover for liking a slave girl, and ran away and hid her- 
self in a cave like this one. The ferns and vines made 
a curtain to shield the pouting goddess, and the day 
grew dark, because she had hidden herself from all eyes 
in her unhappiness.” 

“ That is not a very good story,” Pedro interrupted 
with youthful candor. “ Bother J apan ! The sun- 


56 


A BERMUDA LD^Y 


goddess was a nasty lady, I think. She was like you — 
sometimes,” with a roguish glance at his companion. 

“ But I do not hide in a cave and sulk,” protested 
Bertha. 

“ No. You would, though, if you had a lover and 
he went after a slave girl,” was the prompt and mock- 
ing rejoinder. 

Pedro, the embodiment of perpetual motion, arose 
to his feet. 

I can tell better stories,” he said, now waving his 
arms toward the roof in fantastic pantomime, now exe- 
cuting a mazy sort of dance on lines and circles, drawn 
with a stick, to the low cadence of an improvised song, 
and again placing his ear to the rock, as if listening 
to weird subterranean sounds. 

“ Yes,” assented Bertha, placidly. 

Then the boy wove together the lore he had gathered 
from the master of such retreats in his own way. 
Bertha only half listened to the random recital. The 
remote recesses of the cave were a gnome land, where 
dwelt the fairies that draped the walls with a sort of 
stony tapestry of the deposit of drops of water and 
twisted the crystals into masses, while down in the abyss 
that no mortal has fathomed, beyond the pool of sleep- 
ing water, was the home of a wicked magician who had 
dealings with nocturnal spirits of evil, as in the cavern 
of Caripe, or the realms of Tartarus of the Greeks. 
Yes, and the cave man had here his abode, splitting 
knives and spear-heads from stones, still found, making 
bone needles out of the ribs of rodents, and sewing 
cotton from sinews. On the whole Pedro liked better 
to people his mimic stage with the buccaneers of an 
earlier day, who concealed here bags of money and 
caskets of jewels. Wearying of his own tale, he was 


IN A CAVE 


57 


about to detain the patient Bertha longer in the nook 
where he was host, with the jealous tyranny of a spoiled 
child, by proclaiming the whole place the shop of Mr. 
Samuel Cox at St. George’s, and she must buy his 
various goods, with pebbles for shillings and sixpences, 
when voices reached them. 

Bertha moved, hastily gathered up her handkerchief, 
and brushed away the nut-shells. Pedro ran to the 
entrance and lifted the green mantle of vines, cautiously 
to look out. Who was coming Bertha waited with 
heightened color and quickly throbbing heart, obeying 
a first impulse to shrink back out of sight. The boy 
swiftly returned on tiptoe, caught his companion by 
the arm and drew her towards a side passage, with real 
or assumed fear. 

“ Oh ! A lot of sailors are here with Eric, and they 
are all tipsy,” he whispered. “ Quick! We must hide 
where they cannot find us.” 

Bertha resisted. “ Nonsense! We should face them, 
and walk to the house,” she said, firmly. 

‘‘ Oh, don’t missy ! Let them pass. The master is 
not here, you know. They might catch us and beat 
us ! ” pleaded the lad with excitement, and still cling- 
ing to her arm. 

Bertha hesitated, then yielded to his sudden terror 
as mingled sounds of songs and shouts became more 
audible. Pedro guided her along a mere shelf to the 
right, took several turnings in the darkness by groping 
along the wall, and halted in a sort of niche. He 
warned Bertha not to venture further in the obscurity. 

A group of man-of-war’s men now approached with 
noisy hilarity. In the expansive enjoyment of a day 
on shore each had gathered a posy in the gardens along 
the road to fasten on the breast, and, as a rule, they 


58 


A BERMUDA LILY 


carried their shoes in the knotted handkerchief slung 
over the shoulder on a stick. They had encountered 
Eric in their rambles, and become intimate comrades, 
with the easy, hail-fellow-well-met of sailors under sim- 
ilar circumstances. He invited them to pull across the 
little cove to his own cabin. Eric delighted in the com- 
pany of the jolly tars, and greedily accepted invita- 
tions to drink out of their respective bottles. Doubt- 
less these bluff holiday-makers were of the type of Lord 
Cochrane’s crew, when he proposed to restore five thou- 
sand dollars each to the officers of the Spanish prize 
ship. La Fortuna, and the victors responded with gen- 
erous alacrity : “ Aye, aye, my lord ; with all our 
hearts ! ” 

Even more, at the moment, did these reproduce Cap- 
tain Marry at’s merry mariners of the West Indian 
strand, draining the cocoanuts filled with grog by ap- 
parently guileless natives. 

The group paused at the cave and flung themselves 
on the ground in the shade to rest. Bertha’s cheek 
grew hot with annoyance at the ribald jests, the coarse 
mirth and the snatches of song to which she was com- 
pelled to listen. The boy at her side shuddered. Ah, 
why had she hesitated until it was too late to escape 
from the place of concealment.'^ She had often met 
sailors on leave, although they had never sought the 
headland before in her recollection. She did not fear 
them, but now a certain instinct of feminine cowardice, 
similar to that of the birds in hiding beneath the leaves 
of the hedges at the approach of the sportsman, made 
her dread to emerge and walk through their midst. 
Gallantry might readily assume alarming phases to- 
day. The boatswain stumbled into the cave with a 
somewhat unsteady gait and paused to light his pipe. 


IN A CAVE 


59 


Bertha and Pedro held their breath and stiffened them- 
selves against the wall. Surely the flash of light from 
a burning match might reveal them to an eye not dazed 
by drink and the hot sun! 

The boatswain bawled : “ Haul away, Joel” 

Pedro giggled, and Bertha put her hand over his 
mouth. 

“ Hullo, there ! ” said the boatswain, pausing and 
gazing around vacantly. 

“ Mind the holes,” warned Eric from the entrance, 
in his thick, guttural tones. 

The boatswain took the hint and rejoined his mates, 
where intoxication was passing through the usual 
phases of the comic and the maudlin, without swift 
degeneration into the quarrelsome and the tragic. 
Eric and his avidity in accepting all potations, was the 
butt of wit. 

“ He’s an outlandish craft,” remarked one sailor. 

“ Where d’ye hail from, mate ? ” questioned another. 

“ Ha I ha ! ha ! ” laughed Everhard’s protege, with 
a gurgling sound of removing his lips from the neck of 
a bottle. “ That’s good I It warms a man’s blood — * 
the liquor does.” 

“Now jig a bit and sing us a song. Not another 
drop shall you have until you’ve piped the ‘ Rio 
Grande ’ or ‘ Haul the Bowline,’ ” suggested a third. 

Eric whimpered and whined. Shouts of laughter 
greeted his awkward attempts to obey this command 
and win the bribe. 

“ Wear away, mate,” said an old sailor. “ Ye’ll 
kick a hole in these blessed islands at that rate.” 

“ Couldn’t kick a hole in a — thousand years,” re- 
torted Eric, unconsciously quoting the words of his 
protector. 


60 


A BERMUDA LILY 


Sailors are reputed to have long cherished a belief 
that the Bermudas are only a thin, floating crust, and 
shght pressure would be requisite to break through the 
surface. 

The rough hilarity was redoubled in response to the 
scapegoat’s grumbling protest and grotesque shufflings 
and gyrations, until a dull, heavy sound announced that 
he had reeled and fallen. 

“ Let the poor devil have his snooze,” said the boat- 
swain. 

“ The wretch ! The poor brute. Oh, if my father 
were only here ! ” murmured Bertha in the depths of 
the cave, clenching her hand. 

The boatswain opined, with Dibdin, that there was 
nothing as pleasant this side of the grave as drinking, 
in a hoarse voice. Perhaps Jack will be expected to 
extol the steam capstan as a sea song of the future, 
and the nautical lyrist accept the donkey-engine as a 
sympathetic theme. 

It happened that Henry Atherton approached the 
spot at this moment. He had forgotten neither his 
upset in the boat nor the girl’s face bent over him when 
the waves hurled him on the rocks. He must pay a 
visit of acknowledgment for his rescue to father and 
daughter. He had even thrust into his pocket some 
recent numbers of German periodicals sent by his 
mother from Berlin. 

The cottage was deserted, with windows and doors 
open. The spider monkey sat on the threshold with 
an expression of weazened suspicion. The lame heron 
hopped away from a stranger with surprising agility. 
The red and blue birds in the cages twittered notes of 
curiosity and interrogation. 

“ The people must be near at hand,” thought the 


IN A CAVE 


61 


visitor, and, attracted by the sound of voices, he sought 
the cave. 

He noticed a group of sailors seated on the ground, 
and sought members of the family in all directions. 
He called in clear and ringing tones : 

“ Herr Everhard ! Fraulein Bertha ! Is anyone at 
home.? ” 

The sailors were silent. The next moment Pedro 
peeped out from the vines at the entrance of a 
cave, and Bertha was visible in the archway. First 
impressions were apt to sway the youth with the Greek 
nose. Bertha, slight of form and delicately fair, with 
her face turned eagerly toward him, was a nymph, a 
siren of the coral grottoes. His imagination was 
attracted, fired by a new situation. Evidently the 
maiden and the lad were held prisoners in this dark 
retreat by the presence of the tipsy sailors. 

He strode forward with scanty ceremony and 
spumed the prostrate Eric with his foot in passing. 
The boatswain, who sat smoking his pipe with his back 
against the trunk of a tree, saluted mechanically. 
Henry Atherton entered the cave and extended his hand 
to Bertha, who placed her slender fingers in his broad 
palm confidingly. They looked at each other before 
he relinquished her hand. Sunshine and cool green 
shadows flickered over the two young faces, touching 
smiling lips and earnest eyes with a dawning joy and 
wonder. 

“ I am glad to find you at home,” he said with a 
softened intonation of meaning which was habitual to 
him in speaking with women. 

“ Oh, so am I,” replied Bertha. 

“ Did you expect me ? Are you really glad that I 
have come back.? ” he insisted. “ How jolly it is here 


62 


A BERMUDA LILY 


in the cave; deliciously dark. We might look at our- 
selves in the mirror of water, and play at some sort 
of magic, you know, by the hour, but for those sailors.” 

“ Yes,” she assented, simply. 

“ That will be for another time,” he added. ‘‘ Now 
do not forget that it is an engagement.” 

Bertha laughed incredulously. As if she were likely 
to forget! The young man smiled with his most com- 
placent expression and caressed his moustache. Pedro 
darted into one of the recesses of the cave and brought 
back several balls of the sand-box tree. As the trio 
emerged from the hiding-place he threw them at Eric, 
as bombs. The fruit exploded with a sharp report, 
scattering the brittle, glass-like seeds, which struck the 
victim smartly on the nose and face. The Swede 
blinked and groaned, while Pedro danced around him 
with peals of laughter, in which the sailors joined. 

“ Don’t blind the poor beggar,” said Lieutenant 
Atherton. He’s only drunk.” 

“ Only drunk ! ” repeated Bertha, as they walked 
toward the house. “ He is not to drink. My father 
does not allow it.” 

“ Quite right, of course,” the officer assented, easily. 

“ Papa says it is being now a sensible man, by and 
by a fool, and presently a beast,” said the severe 
Bertha. 

“Will Herr Everhard receive me?” inquired the 
visitor. 

“ He would have been pleased to see you again ; but 
he has gone to Hamilton to give some lessons.” 

“ He must be awfully clever. I can call another day. 
This is really my first outing and, of course, I came 
here.” 

Sympathy banished shyness in the girl. Neither of 


IN A CAVE 


the young people were troubled in the least as regarded 
any lack of convenance in the situation. 

“ How tired you must be ! ” Bertha exclaimed. 

The convalescent consented to recline in the ham- 
mock, suspended near the door, with the addition of 
several soft cushions to render him more comfortable. 
He confessed to being thirsty after his walk. Pedro 
brought a bottle of ale, uncorked and placed it on a 
little table beside the hammock. Lieutenant Atherton, 
obtaining permission to smoke of the new zealous 
young mistress of the house, and preferring his pipe, 
Bertha held a light for him as she often did for her 
father. Then she seated herself on a stool, clasped 
her hands on her knee, and continued to observe her 
guest with a furrow of anxiety on her usually smooth 
brow. He was amused and touched by this candid 
interest. He found feminine ministrations soothing 
and pleasant, especially the attentions of a pretty girl. 
He drained his glass of ale, puffed a cloud of smoke 
from his lips, and looked at Bertha. Yes; she was 
uncommonly good form, he assured himself with secret 
satisfaction. He had no right to lounge there in the 
hammock in her presence as a lady, only she was so 
sweet-tempered she did not mind. Still forgetful of 
herself, Bertha shook her head and suggested: 

“ You should have a cup of tea after your walk. 
We can make some t^a.” 

“ Never mind the tea,” he retorted. ‘‘ If I were 
only artist or poet I would make a study of you in the 
cave.” 

“ Of me.^ ” queried Bertha. 

The young man gazed at her dreamily with half- 
closed eyes as he murmured: “You have no idea how 


A BERMUDA LILY 


charming you were yonder through a curtain of vines 
and ferns.” 

A wave of vivid color deepened in the girl’s cheek 
and mounted to her temples. He watched the emo- 
tional effect of his words with indolent satisfaction. 
Banished on military duty to these remote islands, 
what could he do but drift on the tide of daily events.^ 
Mere acquaintance rapidly merged to intimacy of tone 
and glance in this interview, during the absence of wise 
elders. 

Pedro hovered near with an increasing sullenness of 
expression. 

“ Can you cook, mister.? ” he demanded, pertly. 

“ Pedro ! ” warned the young mistress. 

The boy made a bow and slipped back a pace. Lieu- 
tenant Atherton removed his pipe and regarded him. 

“ Rather, youngster,” he rejoined. “ I’ve got my 
own dinner many a time on excursions to the moun- 
tains. An old Frenchman in the Pyrenees once taught 
me to make an omelette.” 

The malicious suggestion of Pedro effectually ban- 
ished sentiment from the mind of Bertha. The hour 
was foilr in the afternoon, and the practical thought 
that her father might return at any moment, and urge 
the visitor to remain to a late dinner, perturbed her 
spirit. 

Lieutenant Atherton sat erect in the hammock and 
laid his pipe on the table. “ Do you go in for making 
toffy, you little sinner.? ” he inquired. 

Pedro shook his head. “ It is very good to eat,” he 
admitted. 

“ I’ve cooked toffy over an Etna in Switzerland,” 
said the officer. “ It is as easy as possible, and no end 
of fun. You just take a lot of butter and sugar, with 


IN A CAVE 65 

the juice of a lemon and some almonds, if you happen 
to have them. You add a dash of vinegar to make the 
toffy brittle when it comes out. I will show you.” 

“ I fear the Etna is broken,” faltered Bertha. 

Pedro stole an affrighted glance at her. “ There’s 
no fire in the kitchen,” he added. 

Lieutenant Atherton arose to his full height and 
responded nonchalantly : “ Lead the way to the kitchen, 
mon cher. We can kindle a fire in no time.” 

Opposition was useless. There was no help for it. 
The intruder was destined to spy out the nakedness of 
the land on this occasion. Pedro slipped in advance to 
the detached building, with the usual papaw trees 
growing near the door, ready to promote all culinary 
efforts by rendering fresh meat less tough if wrapped 
in the mallow-like leaves. Even Bertha sometimes made 
pickles and preserves of the yellow fruit. 

Who so boyish and merry as the officer.? He ap- 
peared to notice nothing unusual in the tropical char- 
acter of this primitive interior, where Susan, the 
humble neighbor, had performed certain duties, hastily, 
at an earlier hour. A whimsical idea occurred to him. 
What if he made a study of the national characteristics 
of the kitchens into which he had intruded since early 
boyhood, from the dahabeah of the Nile to the king- 
dom of a watering place hotel, where an affable head 
cook took crayfish from the tub of water where the 
crustaceans awaited sacrifice in a sauce, for a bevy of 
English children, the variety might be edifying. Of 
all these, the Bermuda kitchen of Everhard’s cottage, 
with its bare, whitewashed walls, few utensils of a most 
elementary utility, and stone hearth, was nearest akin 
to the patriarchal implements employed when Abra- 
ham received the three unknown guests and Sara was 


66 


A BERMUDA LELY 


bidden to prepare food by lighting a fire of jasmine 
roots, while fiour was kneaded into unleavened bread, 
an oven made of stones taken from the brook, a sheep 
killed, skinned, and sealed up in the receptacle with 
clay. 

The young man did not impart these reflections to 
his companions. He submitted to having an impro- 
vised towel apron pinned over his coat by the careful 
Bertha. Pedro speedily blew a flame in a pile of dry 
twigs on the hearth, then darted out the door to pluck 
a lemon. The hostess rummaged cupboards in search 
of the requisite materials, sacrificing without compunc- 
tion a remaining pat of butter and the contents of the 
sugar bowl to the demands of the cook. Lieutenant 
Atherton gravely selected a tin pot hanging by a nail 
on the wall, consigned to it the sugar, and placed the 
utensil on the fire. 

“ It must boil for a long while, you know. Here, 
little nigger, just watch the pot.” 

“ I am not a nigger,” Pedro stormed, enraged as 
on a former occasion of similar teasing. “ Ah, how I 
hate you ! ” 

The young man tossed away his apron and strolled 
back to the hammock, inviting Bertha to accompany 
him by a glance. The moments flew while he explained 
to her that the Royal Engineers were to have a camp 
in the romantic spot known as Painter’s Vale, with the 
aim of quarrying limestone of a quality hard, almost 
crystalline, and capable of polish. 

“ It’s a bore to live in tents, and that sort of thing,” 
he said in the confidential tone adopted so readily by 
both on the occasion. “ We shall go in for a lot of 
cricket, and our own ground, don’t you know. Old 
Kirby is not at all a bad batsman, and I bowl. I fancy 


IN A CAVE 


67 


we may do some rather good work here. The fellows 
at the Dock Yard and in garrison are limp and dull.” 

“ Your friend does not seem old,” remarked Bertha, 
with a ruminating interest in such information con- 
cerning men and things as he might vouchsafe to 
impart. 

“ F aeon de parler," he said, biting his lip to repress 
a smile. “ I hope you care for cricket.” 

“ I once visited the grounds at Hamilton,” said 
Bertha, blushing. 

Here Pedro approached. He carried the tin pot 
with the handle wrapped in a cloth. A smoky odor 
was perceptible. 

“ The stuff has gone all black,” he said. 

“ You have left the toffy to burn,” was the reproach- 
ful comment of Lieutenant Atherton, peering into the 
receptacle. 

“ Just ran away to tease Eric,” confessed the boy. 

“ Oh, Pedro ! ” exclaimed Bertha in dismay. 

“No matter,” said the visitor, consulting his watch. 
“ Now you will know how to make no end of toffy 
for yourself. I will come over to see your father soon. 
Good bye ! ” With another lingering hand pressure 
he was gone. 

“ I believe you let the sugar bum on purpose,” said 
Bertha, with a sigh of relief and regret. 

Pedro dimpled with glee. “ No,” he protested, inno- 
cently. “ I forgot a little minute. The toffy is so 
nice. Why does that man always call me a nigger.?” 

Bertha disdained to sooth wounded vanity. 

“ Papa needs to teach you better manners with 
strangers,” she said, coldly. 

The lad put his pretty head on one side and regarded 
her with a soft and coaxing appeal. “ You will not 


A BERMUDA LILY 


tell him this time, missy. Will you.? The snake-nut 
has brought good luck to-day.” 

“ I do not wish your fetish,” and Bertha petulantly 
unfastened the cord and gave him back the charm. 

The boy took it. His eyes narrowed, and a somber 
expression clouded his features. “ You may need the 
charm yet.” 

Had Pedro again spoken.? Were the words the 
prophecy of the passing breeze.? Was the voice of the 
sea audible in a moaning undertone out amidst the 
reefs, as the presage of storms.? Bertha felt chilled as 
she glanced around, and the shadows of evening fell. 


CHAPTER VII 


COUSINS 

Mr. Samuel Cox stood on the threshold of his shop. 
He was mature in years, with a worn physiognomy, 
bent shoulders, a vague smile, an abstracted blue eye, 
and the reticent disposition of one who kept his own 
counsel on most matters. He was a man of business 
of considerable importance in such a community. Cus- 
tomers of a shrewd and speculative turn of mind con- 
jectured that, as a merchant, he would have speedily 
gone to the wall elsewhere, for there was an element 
of unreadiness about him, as if he had inherited the 
emporium from his father-in-law years before without 
ever taking an inventory of the stock subsequently. 
The resources of the shop were firmly credited with 
being unlimited, from a mackintosh to a portable bath- 
tub, an American rocking-chair or a Chinese gong. 
Local wit affirmed that to ask Samuel Cox for the most 
improbable article of ornament, luxury or utility was 
to have him rub his chin thoughtfully, and respond: 

I daresay there is one somewhere about. I fancy I 
saw it on that inner shelf the other day.” 

Undoubtedly Mr. Cox had a ledger in which he made 
entries, on occasion; but the public much doubted if 
he often balanced the accounts with any sort of method. 
Affairs did not prosper with him to a marked degree. 
Debt ever hampered his resources, and yet the tide of 
the flotsam and jetsam of a West Indian and South 
American port, in the motley collection brought by 


70 


A BERMUDA LILY 


ships, and the auction sales of dismembered households, 
flowed in and out of the low, vaulted shop, with an 
enclosed veranda shut in with green jalousies, which 
served the proprietor and his intimate friends as a club 
corner, where an afternoon game of whist could be 
enjoyed, with tobacco, whiskey and soda, and even the 
careful mixing of West Indian rum, sugar, lime juice 
and Angostura bitters. Captain Cox, when ashore, 
dropped in for a snug rubber. Doctor Russell and 
Everhard took a hand, frequently, or lingered to watch 
the game. The merchant’s womenkind regarded the 
whist corner of the veranda with disapproval. 

As Mr. Cox paused in the doorway, with his hands 
thrust into his pockets, a modest equipage, consisting 
of a little cart drawn by a grey donkey, halted, and 
Bertha alighted. Mr. Cox nodded, withdrew his right 
hand from his pocket and greeted his niece. 

“ How are you, Bertha.? ” he said in a neutral tone, 
neither genial nor hostile, which characterized his bear- 
ing with relations. 

“ Good morning, uncle,” was the blithe rejoinder. 
“ All well.? ” 

“ Yes,” said Samuel Cox, carelessly. “ Your father 
was here yesterday.” 

“Fancy, uncle! I have come to buy a new frock; 
but I must ask Fanny’s advice about it,” cried Bertha. 
“ May Pedro take the donkey into the garden ? ” 

“ Of course.” Mr. Cox strolled into the veranda, 
selected several stalks of sugar-cane from a heap on 
the pavement and gave them to Pedro. 

The boy accepted the gift with his most ingenuous, 
dimpling smile, cut a piece and thrust it into his own 
mouth, pipe fashion, then offered a bit to the donkey 
to nibble in turn. 


COUSINS 


71 


A pile of delicately tinted silk lay on the counter. 
Bertha paused to examine it with a new-born interest 
in finery. Her uncle followed her negligently. He 
was apt to ramble through the place somewhat aim- 
lessly and leave a customer to decide on a purchase 
without interference. He did not possess the most ele- 
mentary quality of the ingratiating shopkeeper of all 
lands. 

“ How lovely ! ” exclaimed young Bertha. “ The 
color is like our Bermuda waters, all blue and green.” 

“ The silk is rather poor stuff, and stained by the 
sea,” said the disinterested mercer. “ It is Japanese, 
you know. I got it from the damaged cargo of an 
Italian vessel.” 

“ Does Fanny admire it? ” inquired Bertha, with 
slight hesitation. 

“ Rather,” said Mr. Cox, with his abstracted smile, 
beginning to fold the goods in such a manner as to 
display discolored patches made by salt water without 
any attempt at concealment. “ I believe Fanny has 
carried oflP the best of the piece already.” 

Then Bertha made her way into the domestic sphere 
of her relatives, across the narrow street, and entered 
without ceremony. The house of Samuel Cox was 
small, and conveyed an impression to a stranger of 
being somewhat contracted for the occupants. Other- 
wise an atmosphere of tolerable harmony pervaded the 
interior. The true source of mutual good understand- 
ing was the result of each member pursuing a nearly 
independent course of action, untrammeled by undue 
espionage, while a kindred trait of enthusiasm, san- 
guine of the success of some scheme in hand, often ani- 
mated the entire family. 

Mrs. Cox was a round ball of a matron, with an 


72 ' 


A BERMUDA LILY 


amiable countenance, a smooth and genial voice and 
little, twinkling eyes, like those of certain animals of 
the guinea-pig species. A native of the town of St. 
Georges, her ambitions were amply satisfied with her 
surroundings in life. She abstracted a fair amount of 
amusement from the traffic of the square and the daily 
item of news in circulation. Early church services on 
saints’ days, lectures, an occasional concert, auction 
sales, the military band in the public garden, and un- 
limited visiting occupied her waking hours. Mrs. Cox 
might be designated a good “ diner out ” in the most 
veracious sense of the term, for she was seldom to be 
found at home. Accorded such a paradise as Palmetto 
Lodge, embowered in shrubbery, on Harrington 
Sound, the home of her sister-in-law, Mrs. Russell, she 
would have pined miserably in sheer dullness of spirit. 
Her gregarious instincts led her to prefer the mingled 
sounds of human voices, movement, excitement, if at- 
tainable, even dusty pavements, and the crowd of the 
harbor, at times, to sylvan solitude. Vouchsafed 
wealth and a social position, in any community, the 
matron with the twinkling eyes and nose “ tip tilted ” 
by nature at a humorous angle, would have enjoyed 
wide popularity, and her loquacity, often rendered 
piquant by a grain of Attic salt, been much commended. 
As it was, her friends were numerous, and pressing 
were the claims upon her time made by other matrons 
in town and country. Mrs. Cox had been known to 
leave rugs, curtains, table covers and crockery on the 
floor of dining room and passageway in the midst of 
an autumn adjustment of household goods, which is 
equivalent to housecleaning in colder climes, and don 
bonnet and shawl, tempted by an invitation to drive 
over to Hamilton with a neighbor, thus exposing the 


COUSINS 


73 


unwary to the risk of tumbling into pitfalls, including 
Matilda’s babies, trotting about in infantile confidence, 
having learned to take care of themselves at an unusu- 
ally tender age. 

Matilda was a married daughter, pretty, plump, 
usually attired in a chintz wrapper, and very fond of 
novel reading when not employed in making ruffles for 
her oflPspring on a hand-worked sewing machine. Mr. 
Smith held a clerkship in a government office, with the 
smallest possible pittance of a salary ; but Matilda felt 
she had raised the family standard of gentility, as her 
husband was not in trade, nor had there ever been a 
question of opposition to her entering in and taking 
possession of the Samuel Cox kingdom with her 
progeny. The children shared a tiny, neglected gai^ 
den, wedged in between high walls, where several palms, 
loquot and papaw trees languished, with a pet cat and 
numerous puppies. They frequently engaged in lively 
skirmishes with their Aunt Fan, otherwise Miss Frances 
Cox, in the kitchen, resulting in slaps and lamenta- 
tions and the intervention of maternal authority. 

‘‘ Dick ! Stop crying, sir ! How can you be so 
cross with a little innocent child, Fanny ? ” 

The little innocent child in question might have de- 
posited his luncheon molasses side undermost on a chair 
of tapestry and bead-work wrought by Frances. The 
latter was a disciplinarian. In the school of experience, 
which had so early necessitated their getting on their 
own little legs and minding themselves, Bobby, Dick, 
Medora and Jack accepted their aunt as an inevitable 
thorn in the flesh, while the grandmother was the most 
jolly and delightful of comforters, only not to be de- 
pended upon. 

Frances Cox, very genteel, alert and sharp-witted. 


74 


A BERMUDA LILY 


taught music to a limited number of young girls of 
her acquaintance, just to be obliging and add to her 
slender store of pin-money. All pleasure in melody 
was robbed by a distasteful sense of drudgery and a 
longing to rap the knuckles of blundering pupils lent 
additional energy to her instructions. She was not a 
popular teacher. Indeed, she was developing only too 
rapidly the acerbity, snappish tones and latent dis- 
content which embodied her brother-in-law’s lofty and 
masculine idea of a spinster. Her pride was wounded 
by the keen mortification of several matrimonial dis- 
appointments. A chaplain, a general officer and a 
Nova Scotia captain, master of his own ship, had ad- 
mired Fanny, then gone their respective ways. Mater- 
nal commiseration verged on patronage, on such 
occasions, while the contemplation of Matilda was half 
satirical. All organization of domestic rule in the 
small house on the narrow street of St. Georges was 
due to the erratic zeal of the youngest daughter. 
Fanny was her father’s confidante in many visionary 
schemes of problematical aggrandizement. Fanny 
dusted, scrubbed, polished and directed the menial of 
the hour, usually an impertinent mulatto girl of the 
port, who frequently gave warning. Lapses from in- 
dustry were not rare, especially when the south wind 
blew. Frances cherished her own dreams of future 
success, as yet somewhat vaguely defined. She studied 
journals of fashion and read exciting romances, curled 
up in the corner of a sofa, or dressed a new doll for 
her niece, Medora, as a peace offering after internecine 
strife. Responsibility had ever fallen to her share. 
In any emergency Mrs. Cox was usually taking tea 
in the suburbs, and Matilda had a headache. Fanny 
must arrange the whole matter. One woman of the 


COUSINS 


75 


family circle ever thus takes the lead. An armed neu- 
trality existed at all times between the waspish 
Frances and her brother-in-law, Hartley Smith, occa- 
sionally culminating in sharp encounters. Fanny made 
severe criticisms on the personal appearance of Mr. 
Smith, with the superfluous additional statement that 
she would not have married him if there had not been 
another man in the whole world. Mr. Smith retaliated 
in the bosom of his family by marveling what manner 
of biped would espouse Frances, a problem repeated in 
the garden by the children with youthful indiscretion. 
At such critical moments the unfailing good humor of 
Mrs. Cox served as the layer of cotton wool to keep 
the domestic crockery of temper from jarring and 
cracking horribly. 

Our heroine, Bertha, having arrived to spend the 
day with her kindred, quite unannounced, the charac- 
ter of Frances Cox has been sketched somewhat en dis- 
habille, in a home aspect. The cousin had her public 
manner, and mingled with elements of society from 
which her family was excluded. The clergyman’s wife, 
and even the ladies of the garrison and the civil service, 
found her a useful and unobtrusive person of rather 
good manners, who saved them trouble, on occasion, 
by fetching and carrying for them, and wrote notes 
about public charitable enterprises. Fanny smiled a 
forced smile of obsequious subserviency and performed 
the imposed duty with alacrity. She obeyed the Ori- 
ental creed, and kissed the hand she could not cut off. 
She was aware that the careless feminine amiability of 
toleration bestowed upon her was attributable to her 
plain features. No anxious mother or jealous daugh- 
ter feared Frances Cox as a rival. She frequented 
the band concerts, cricket ground and shops, but envy 


76 


A BERMUDA LILY 


robbed her of much of the naive enjoyment of her 
mother in contemplating the luxury of others. Fanny 
sought models in her sphere whereon to adapt her de- 
meanor, speech and slender wardrobe. The triumphant 
results of taste and skill that emanated from her 
maidenly bower softened her own asperities of disposi- 
tion, and even inspired respect in the household. Mr. 
Smith hinted that his sister-in-law was a toady, and 
Fanny retorted with feminine recklessness that he was 
a snob. 

“ There ! ” she exclaimed, holding at arm’s length a 
hat which she had retrimmed. “Not half bad! The 
feathers all go another way this season.” 

“ Fanny, you are clever 1 ” said her mother, admii> 
ingly. 

“ It’s sweet I ” echoed Matilda. 

Fanny removed several pins from her mouth and 
gave her chin a little upward jerk of self-reliance. 

Here Bertha entered, and was greeted with that sur- 
face cordiality which is a universal phase of feminine 
deceit in all countries. The girl had no sensitive per- 
ception of the timbre of honesty in her welcome. She 
was young, ignorant of many phases of human nature, 
and found the world pleasant. Mrs. Cox patted the 
visitor on the cheek and told her she was looking well. 
Matilda marveled at her growth. The children hov- 
ered near, hopeful that her pocket contained some 
gifts, and then trooped off to welcome Pedro and lead 
the grey donkey into the garden. The animal was tied 
to a tree and attendant myrmidons kept off the flies 
with branches of leaves, duties interrupted by games 
and listening to Pedro’s tales about Eric’s fishing. 

The salutation of Frances was, on the whole, the 
most sincere, for the Samuel Cox household was an 


COUSINS 


77 


enemy’s camp precisely because the women were alien. 
The older girl rather liked Bertha in a cool and pat- 
ronizing way, while she had for Everhard an instinc- 
tive and half-unwilling admiration. Fanny petted 
Bertha — a mere child — and accepted the homage of a 
docile, if helpless, admiration of her own superior 
abilities with gratification. On the present occasion 
she surveyed the newcomer from head to foot with a 
certain critical affability, and even allowed her to try 
on the freshly trimmed hat. 

“ What a guy you look in that old straw, Bertha,” 
she remarked. 

“ Yes,” she assented, submissively. 

‘‘ Confess that it has been thrown overboard from 
Eric’s boat no end of times by that imp of a boy,” 
laughed Fanny. 

“ Only twice,” the wearer of shabby headgear con- 
fessed. “ I found it yesterday up in the pomegranate 
tree. I am quite sure that Pedro hung it on a twig 
for the monkey to fetch down. How I wish that I had 
your skill, Fanny ! Of course I can put a fresh ribbon 
around the crown of a hat, but it is not the same thing.”" 

“ Not quite,” Fanny admitted, loftily. “ Let us buy 
a new one this morning. La ! I could produce a better 
effect than your’s blindfold! ” 

“ How nice of you ! I came this morning to ask you 
about — a frock.” Bertha paused and blushed. The 
others regarded her with awakening curiosity. 

“ Why ? What’s up ? ” questioned F anny, sharply. 

“ Oh, nothing,” said the younger daughter of Eve, 
hastily. “ I fear my things are old, and Aunt Ellen 
told me to consult Fanny. She thinks I am grown up 
now, and this winter we may all be invited out a little. 


78 


A BERMUDA LILY 


The Governor’s wife is talking of a charity bazaar, 
you know.” 

Her hearers pricked up their ears. A bazaar under 
the patronage of the first lady of the community sug- 
gested possibilities of excitement and commotion to the 
colonial feminine mind. 

“ You will need a white frock and a blue sash, then,” 
said Fanny, thoughtfully. 

Bertha laughed. “ Oh, Aunt Sophia, is not a white 
frock and a sash the attire of a good little schoolgirl, 
with her hair braided in a pigtail down her back? ” she 
said, appealing to Mrs. Cox. I am going to beg 
Fanny to teach me to put up my hair in the very latest 
fashion.” 

‘‘Well! You are coming out!” exclaimed Fanny. 

Half an hour later the two cousins were alone to- 
gether. Mrs. Cox had sought the kitchen with the 
intention of making a jam tart for the two o’clock 
dinner. The matron’s instincts were hospitable. Ma- 
tilda had returned to her sewing-machine with a slight 
yawn. 

Bertha was seated with eyes half closed, like a young 
cat, before the mirror of the toilette table covered with 
white dimity, with a linen apron gathered around her 
shoulders while Fanny arranged her tresses in an elab- 
orate coiffure. The result lent a surprising additional 
maturity to the girl’s appearance. The mirror was a 
good one and well adjusted. Miss Cox practiced many 
eccentric modes of brushing her own dark locks before 
the glass, with marvelous results in lustrous puffs and 
bristling, ornamental pins. She resembled the women 
of the Latin races in this respect, holding the theory 
that a carefully dressed head is the crowning glory of 
beauty. Inspired by a noble discontent, as the years 


COUSINS 


79 


glided on, she now burned and frizzled her hair, with 
the aid of hot slate pencils and irons, then placed a 
rose in the disheveled masses and again smoothed the 
tresses in studied simplicity, confined by bands of silver 
gilt or scarlet velvet. 

She withdrew a pace and regarded Bertha with 
artistic dissatisfaction. 

“ You may answer for to-day,” she remarked. 
“ Take this blue ribbon and tie up your hair at the 
back of your head in a simple knot. You look far 
better.” 

‘‘ Yes,” Bertha rejoined, with a sigh of deep con- 
tentment and a wondering, sidelong inspection of her 
image in the glass. “ I can manage that.” 

The visit was delightful and eventful. The cousins 
went shopping, and eventually strolled into Samuel 
Cox’s Emporium, hand in hand, where a truly reckless 
number of new gowns were selected by Fanny, and sub- 
sequently consigned to a mulatto seamstress, as the 
craft of the mantua-maker was wholly beyond Bertha’s 
untrained capacities. Frances and Matilda were adepts 
in the manipulation of paper patterns of wondrous 
complexity, sent to them from journals of New York 
and London, and therefore superior to any dumpy and 
clumsy adaptation of the human form of a provincial 
sort. 

“ Dear old dad ! Don’t mix your bitters too strong,” 
said Fanny, giving her father an admonitory pat on 
the shoulder, after she had rummaged the premises. 
Under similar circumstances a French or Swiss daugh- 
ter would have aided a parent in shopkeeping with 
many feminine wiles of attractive sales, not to mention 
Mrs. Cox as presiding at a desk ; but the Anglo-Saxon 


80 


A BERMUDA LILY 


woman seems to be strangely lacking in such interest 
or capacity. 

Samuel Cox chuckled at the admonition. In his esti- 
mation his second child was good and sensible in char- 
acter. The fact that she had not made a brilliant 
marriage did not dismay him in the least. Possibly he 
had an agreeable vision of old age when Fanny would 
fill his pipe, read aloud to him, and otherwise render 
comfortable the evening hour of life. If Fanny divined 
these paternal sentiments she did not share them. The 
woman’s movement of the age had not reached her, 
and the independent lot of the glorified spinster would 
have possessed few attractions for her. Captain Cox 
liked Frances in his bluff sailor fashion. Indeed, the 
criticisms of her hrother-in-law. Hartley Smith, were 
unjust. Mankind might slight her in the more delicate 
phases of vanity, but she managed them, as a rule, in 
a flattering way, and even with tact, so that a soothing 
sense of personal superiority was apt to result from 
association with the young woman of dull complexion 
and tightly laced waist. No doubt the creed of Balzac 
was her own — that men are only tops, if the clew of 
the cord which winds them up can be found. 

The cousins lingered in a nook of the Samuel Cox 
establishment, fitted up as a circulating library with 
shelves and a desk, with a catalogue and a register on 
the lid. Now the women of the family cut the shop, 
and would not have demeaned themselves by serving 
here in any useful capacity ; but the library was in high 
favor with them. They not only wrote the catalogue 
neatly, had the tattered and disheveled volumes of dam- 
aged cargoes suitably bound in a uniform cover of 
grey linen, and attached a label inscribed with the name 
of the work, but skimmed the cream of the contents 


COUSINS 


81 


before giving out to the general public. The ladies 
Cox dallied with the sweets of fiction. Scenes of humble 
life were slighted by them, while they reveled in the 
society of princesses, habitually clad in satin and 
adorned with ropes of diamonds and pearls. Mr. Cox 
did not value his collection of books, especially. He 
left to his womenkind the task of dusting the shelves 
and their contents, inscribing rules which he never 
attempted to enforce, and impartially charged sixpence 
a volume. When his brother-in-law, Everhard, acting 
as censor, claimed his attention for a translation of a 
French romance of the most meretricious school, which 
had crept in like some poisonous fungus growth amidst 
sound and wholesome fruit, he unhesitatingly burned 
the book in the kitchen fire, with the aid of the poker, 
and pronounced the prim and hasty verdict of the man 
who does not read, and is therefore disposed to estimate 
hours spent in the perusal of most literature as a sheer 
waste of time: “ No doubt it is nasty trash! ” 

Samuel Cox would not have scrupled to have made 
a Savanarola bonfire of the vanities of the whole collec- 
tion. The arid lumber-room of his own brain required 
no refreshment in the thoughts of others. One may 
imagine Montaigne, Racine, Moliere, the energetic 
Buff on, the mild and dignified Fenelon, or even the 
spiritual Pascal, glancing at him over the shoulder out 
of the covers of stray, faded little volumes, and demand- 
ing with haughty surprise : “ Who is this canaille of a 
foreigner that he presumes to judge us? ” 

On the whole, the poor books enjoyed a genial 
warmth of welcome and appreciation in this nook such 
as they would have received only on shipboard or in an 
Alpine hotel in rainy weather. 

Of all the frequenters of the place young Bertha was 


82 


A BERMUDA LILY 


the most unprejudiced reader. The girl was neither 
the critic who acts as a pair of snuffers, with the aim 
of extinguishing struggling talent altogether; Jean 
Paul Richter’s judge, who nips off bud and caterpillar 
alike from the tree ; the partisan of a creed praising 
indiscriminately ; nor the chilling doubter hesitating 
between eulogy and blame of a fresh work in the fear 
of being proved in the wrong. She was far from enter- 
ing the realm of enchantment as an arena, armed cap- 
a-pie, with rapier drawn, eager to discover the flaws 
in the corselet and breastplate of the harassed authors. 
Broad effects and careful self-consciousness were both 
welcome to her, if interesting. The warning of Rollin 
would not have moved her : “ When you see a work 
wrought out and polished with much solicitude you 
may conclude that it emanates from a mind of mediocre 
capacity, and occupied with little things. A writer of 
comprehensive and elevated scope does not halt over 
such minutiae.” 

Beyond consigning one pernicious romance to the 
kitchen fire Everhard did not concern himself especially 
with Bertha’s choice of reading. He did not exclaim 
with Sir Anthony Absolute : “ Madam, a circulating 
library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical 
knowledge.” He had not agreed with the elder Colman : 
“ A man may as well turn his daughter loose in Covent 
Garden as trust the cultivation of her mind to a cir- 
culating library.” 

Delightful hours of absorption were spent by the 
motherless maiden, poring over Uncle Samuel’s books. 
She usually sat in the hammock, deaf to the mockeries 
of Pedro and the blandishments of the monkey. The 
hours of meals passed unheeded if her father was absent 
from home. To her was assuredly addressed the sympa- 


COUSINS 


83 


thetic summary of Carlyle : “ ‘ How knowest thou,’ 
may the distressed novelwright exclaim, ‘ that I, where 
I sit, am the foolishest of existing mortals, that this 
my long ear of a fictitious biography shall not find one 
and the other into whose still longer ears it may be the 
means, under Providence, of instilling somewhat? ’ We 
answer: ‘ None knows, none can certainly know; there- 
fore write on, worthy brother, even as thou canst, even 
as it is given thee.’ ” 

In the library nook of the Coral Islands, as else- 
where, the books awaited the verdict of time. Accord- 
ing to Flaubert, bad taste and style invariably have 
belonged to the period immediately preceding our own. 
That of Rousard was Marot, as of Boileau Rousard, 
Voltaire the day of Corneille, and Voltaire, in turn, 
Chateaubriand. 

Alas! May not the literature rescued from oblivion 
by Samuel Cox, and neatly labeled by the Cox ladies, 
have still fallen far short of the standard of excellence 
of Renau : “ I imagine the great success of the century 
will be for the book that depicts for us men such as 
they should be : we have only too much opportunity of 
beholding them as they are.” 

When the grey donkey trotted homeward once more 
Bertha wore the new hat decked with fresh ribbons. 
At eighteen one must begin to look tidy. 


CHAPTER VIII 


SUBMARINE GARDENS 

Captain Cox steered his boat with an experienced 
hand amidst the labyrinth of coral reefs. Such was the 
holiday Fate had in store for Bertha. She had arrayed 
herself in all the finery at her command on the occa- 
sion. The gown, of a rain-washed blue hue, made 
of the Japanese silk bought at St. George’s, her blonde 
tresses confined by a ribbon, as Cousin Fanny had ad- 
vised, and the new hat intended for decorous wear at 
the parish church, risking salt spray and sun, all com- 
bined to render her a harmonious element of a cloudless 
noon. She had rifled boxes belonging to her mother 
for trinkets, after the manner of maidens. A ring set 
with pearls and turquoises adorned her finger, a cameo 
brooch fastened a fichu of Irish lace, lined with pink 
satin, around her neck. She was shod with quaint 
shppers of black satin, with small paste buckles, and 
stockings embroidered in open clocks on the instep. 

Bertha was fair and pleasant to the eye in the obtuse, 
masculine esteem of her companions. A certain novel 
exhilaration of audacity in a subtle feminine sense of 
extravagance and lack of all suitability in her attire 
lent a sparkle of animation to her eyes and an addi- 
tional bloom to her cheek. 

Pedro shot an occasional mocking glance at his play- 
mate through his long eyelashes as who should say: 
“ Well! You are a fine lady to-day! ” 

When the spray of a glancing wave soaked the thin 
84 


SUBMARINE GARDENS 


85 


slippers, an accident unnoticed by the others, he smiled 
mysteriously and gazed over the side of the boat as if 
communing with the denizens of the deep. Bertha 
flushed with annoyance and chagrin at these manifesta- 
tions of juvenile derision, in spite of her newly acquired 
dignity. 

The boat belonged to Captain Cox, not as a mere 
chattel, but as a treasure, almost sentient, to be cher- 
ished, and even humored, like a favorite horse. Rigged 
after the mode of the Bermuda craft adapted to re- 
gatta racing, she obeyed the guiding touch of the 
master on the tiller with the docility of a pet animal. 

Captain Cox, a bluff and red-faced little man, like 
his father before him, was wheedled into bringing over 
his craft on this auspicious day of fine weather to take 
a certain young officer recently arrived on the islands 
to visit the reefs and rocks of the North Shore. Ac- 
cordingly, the Captain had come as agreed, with such 
ship’s stores as a hamper of comestibles, with wine and 
punch bottles. He was seldom proof against feminine 
coaxing, especially that of his nieces, although so con- 
firmed a bachelor that no woman served about his prem- 
ises. Two waifs, picked up at sea, a mulatto, Dick, 
grown old in his service as steward on board ship and 
manservant ashore, while a Chinese was cook, and more 
than suspected of the additional accomplishment of 
laundress, in a somewhat primitive menage, ministered 
to the needs of the good Captain. 

Oh, the beauty and marvels of the water world to 
young souls just awakening! Oh, the supreme delight 
of Bertha in the cloudless day, the hour, the buoyant 
dancing of this tiny craft over the ripples, one of the 
myriad barks afloat on many seas, blown by favoring 


86 


A BERMUDA LILY 


zephyrs, perils of hidden rocks undreaded, and even 
unthought of, by a glad heart ! 

Henry Atherton, as guest of honor of the modest 
excursion, was altogether less gay, yet lent himself 
easily and cheerfully to the diversions of the hour. He 
had received letters from home by the English mail 
that morning which rendered him unusually out of sorts 
with his surroundings in banishment to a “ desert isle,” 
as the engineers of the camp had designated their 
present station. Without the engagement to visit the 
reefs he would have merely lounged about, grumbling 
at Fate, and smoked his pipe. He welcomed any diver- 
sion that made him forget himself. Without betraying 
any outer manifestation of his true estimate of the 
colonial, he decided Captain Cox was a “rum old party,” 
who might prove amusing, if adroitly drawn out ; 
the German, something of an enigma ; and the daughter, 
very fresh and pretty to contemplate in her smart blue 
frock. Gradually, Bertha usurped a first rank in his 
interest, and the others fell back to a secondary place. 
Thus youth and maiden were enthroned side by side in 
the boat, fancy free. More sedate heads might well 
have been intoxicated by the magic of the scene. The 
boat, guided by deft turns of Captain Cox’s hand on 
the helm, followed the winding channels of vivid green 
waters, marked by painted buoys, in the direction of 
the goal, the North Rock, which rises out of the sea 
in the distance, a lonely sentinel of jagged sandstone 
swept by the high tides of the Atlantic. The low banks, 
shallow bays and wooded knolls of the shore seemed left 
far behind with the routine of daily life. The boat, 
full of caprices, now submitted to the dictates of the 
master’s will, and again seemed on the verge of rebel- 
lion, as it rose and turned on a surge to graze the reef 


SUBMARINE GARDENS 


87 


and glide away once more into a deeper channel. The 
pathway of water world was jeweled with liquid sun- 
shine of an indescribable loveliness of blended tints, 
sparkling, glinting and rippling athwart the bows, as 
they sailed over sandy spaces, and deepening to ame- 
thyst shadows near somber ledges of reef. 

Pedro poised himself lightly, with one foot on the 
gunwale, and stretched his arms toward the great deep. 

“ Let us go out to sea. Captain,” he pleaded, breath- 
ing the air with full lungs. “ Don’t take us back to 
the shore at all ! ” He spoke with childish vehemence. 

“ I’ve a mind to fling you over altogether, young- 
ster,” retorted the Captain, jocosely. “ Send you down 
to live with the fishes, and be a merman ever after — eh.? 
I daresay you are more fish than fowl by nature.” 

“ Yes, let us all go overboard and live down yonder,” 
assented the boy in flighty mood. “Will you come.? ” 
He extended his hand to Bertha. 

“ Where .? ” queried the girl, with a start of bewilder- 
ment. She had been listening to Henry Atherton, ab- 
sorbed and interested in talk by no means worthy of 
repetition as words of wisdom, yet possessing a novel 
and rare charm to her untutored ear. 

The young man, used to the society of women, and 
invariably a favorite, even with old ladies, found a cer- 
tain satisfaction which restored his own good humor 
with existing circumstances in lowering his voice to a 
tender and confidential undertone intended for her alone 
in the otherwise harmless trifles of chat incident to the 
moment. There was something delightful in being 
questioned as to her individual preferences by a hand- 
some youth, quite as if she were grown up and already 
a young lady. No one had ever thus demanded of 
Bertha her fancies, and paid any sort of heed to them. 


88 


A BERMUDA LILY 


Oh, subtle flattery of masculine sympathy with her 
modest likings and needs ! She came back from a tremor 
of pleasurable emotion, with a smile. 

‘‘ Go down and tell us how you like it, Pedro,” she 
suggested. 

Pedro feigned a movement of diving as the negro 
boys of Bermuda and the Bahamas plunge to grasp 
corals and bring them up to the surface. In the swift 
bending forward and recoil to equilibrium, he sent 
Lieutenant Atherton’s cane spinning far out into the 
sea, where it speedily sank. The owned uttered a sub- 
dued whistle. 

“ My young friend, that was my favorite walking- 
stick,” he demurred. 

“ I didn’t mean to do it, really,” Pedro protested in 
seeming dismay. 

How could you be so careless ! ” reproved Bertha, 
flushing on cheek and brow with vexation. 

‘‘ Little nigger ! I shall be tempted to give you a 
sound thrashing some day,” teased the officer, in an 
undertone, shaking the culprit by the shoulder. 

“ Please don’t threaten him. He is not used to it,” 
said Bertha, seriously. 

Pedro freed himself, and lowered his eyelids sulkily. 
“ I am not a nigger ! ” he fumed. 

“ Of course you are not,” the young mistress an- 
swered, soothingly. 

The lad’s childish wrath at a fancied insult was half 
mollified. He turned his back on the stranger, dis- 
dainfully. 

“ It is fun to bully the little imp, if only to have you 
defend him,” said Henry Atherton, resuming his confi- 
dential tone, and he looked admiringly at Bertha’s 
blooming face. “ Would you defend me if I were a 


SUBMARINE GARDENS 


89 


scapegrace? I fancy you would, though! You are 
just the sort of girl to stand by a fellow.” 

A smile hovered around Bertha’s sensitive lips. She 
gazed at the horizon without response. Surely life 
was a wonderful revelation to the soul of the girl that 
morning. The water world seemed neither sky, earth 
nor ocean, but an unfathomable immensity blended of 
all these elements. The boat floated in a separate 
sphere of crystal formed by the dome of heaven above 
and the transparent depths of sea below. The very 
liquid medium, emerald and beryl in hue, with scintilla- 
tions of gold and silver, and even a sheen of rose, was as 
ethereal as mountain mists in absolute purity, while the 
ether merged from cloud to spray through scarcely 
perceptible gradations, so that air seemed water and 
water, air, in exquisite modulations of Nature’s handi- 
work in such rare spots on the globe. 

A soft ecstasy filled Bertha’s entire being, rendering 
her mute. She had often visited the reefs in her uncle’s 
boat, yet the place had never before assumed the witch- 
ery of the present hour. Lieutenant Atherton was also 
silent, and toyed with his moustache. The girl stole 
a glance at him. No doubt he was enjoying the novel 
scene beyond power of words to express, she thought. 

Bertha’s parent sat nearer the Captain, with his 
hands clasped around his knee. When he had sharply 
reproved Pedro for kicking the cane overboard, he re- 
sumed his half-challenge of opinions with his brother- 
in-law. He mused on the potentialities of the primal 
germ, if traced back to the realm of protozoa. 

Captain Cox pursed up his lips with a shrewd twinkle 
in his eye. Perhaps the best thing I can do is to cap- 
size the boat and send you all down to try the life of 
fishes,” was his way of parrying the problems of science. 


90 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ Yes,” assented Everhard. “ If we are to accept 
embryology as any sort of guide, the progenitor of 
man certainly led an aquatic existence. Why not? 
It would still be much easier to dwell in water than on 
land. Our food would be brought to us on the tide, 
swept into our very mouths, like the bivalves. Consid- 
ered anatomically and physiologically, the denser ele- 
ment would support our bodies better, demanding a 
less supply of bone and muscle.” 

“ Fancy papa a fish-man,” said Bertha, smiling. 

“ Or a man-fish,” corrected her father. “ As well be 
that as a drone of the earth. I have never been the 
fisher of men I should have been — perhaps.” 

“ Now for your marine glasses,” said Captain Cox, 
turning his craft into another channel. 

“Oh, yes! We may be losing the best ground!” 
exclaimed Bertha, eagerly, aroused to a fresh sense of 
her own responsibility as hostess. 

Then Everhard arose, took a square wooden box of 
primitive make, with a glass pane fitted into the bottom, 
for all implement of witchcraft, and in a moment be- 
came a magician of most subtle powers. The spell he 
wove about his companions consisted simply of holding 
the box in the water over the side of the boat, sunk 
below the surface ripples. 

“ Look ! ” he said to Lieutenant Atherton. 

The latter gazed through the glass, and insisted on 
Bertha’s sharing his pleasure by taking a place closer 
at his side in the undulations of the boat. 

“ Look ! ” repeated the magician. 

Departed from shore they had but entered a gate- 
way, for the true water world spread beneath the boat’s 
keel. Abysses of translucent light trembling away to 
soft impalpable dimness of obscurity in the distance 


SUBMARINE GARDENS 


91 


whether ether, or ocean, revealed sudden warmth of 
color here and there in patches of tawny orange, fiery 
crimson and cobalt blue. Submarine gardens extended 
on all sides in tangled thickets of seaweeds of delicate 
tints, feathery bunches and silky threads of pink and 
amber clinging to the rocks, and others growing on 
stout fronds of the texture of leather, mingled with 
sponges, the branching madrepores, purple fan corals 
and sea-pens. The chrysanthemum and rose of upper 
air had here their prototypes in the clustering zoo- 
phytes, the anemones expanding rainbow-tinted ten- 
tacles to the tide, and the polyps forming starry rays 
on opaque and rough ledges. In this miniature sphere, 
remote and tranquil, governed by fixed laws of growth 
and decay, strange shapes moved noiselessly, horny 
creatures with goggle eyes that stared for a moment 
at intruders, then vanished; the odd little porcupine 
fish, inflated to a ball, and collapsing to sink to the 
bottom; garfish, yellow snappers, sergeant majors, and 
many singular forms of the Sternoplychidae, resplen- 
dent in scaled armor of silver, bronze, emerald and 
steel blue. A shadowy ripple of gold and violet marked 
the passage of some body so fragile in hue and form 
as to seem a phantom, while crystal bubbles of pearly 
membrane floated endowed with vitality, yet evanescent, 
as if blown in sport from the pipe of Neptune. Quite 
independent of man, if unmolested, the inhabitants of 
the water world pursued their course, gliding through 
the pure, almost white depths, or lingering in the zones 
of color, the red, orange and sparkling green, from 
which they seemed to have borrowed their own metallic 
lustre. 

“ Truly, a pleasant home, the basins and shallows of 
the atolls,” quoth Everhard. “ Have we the right to 


A BERMUDA LILY 


disturb the denizens in their haunts? One portion of 
mankind believes it is wicked to kill the finny tribe, and 
the other enjoins: ‘ Slay and eat! ’ ” 

‘‘ Everything was made for man, and he remains a 
hungry animal still,” chuckled Captain Cox. 

“ Our Lord bade Peter cast the net into the sea of 
Galilee, and even ate a fish broiled over the coals after 
the Resurrection,” said Bertha under her breath. 

Her father submerged the marine glass in a fresh 
expanse of sea. 

“ Why not? ” he assented in an airy tone. 

“ Besides, the fish would only fight each other, if left 
alone, so it comes to the same thing,” remarked Lieu- 
tenant Atherton in philosophical vein. 

‘‘ Pedro, my boy, if the Captain sent us down to 
dwell beneath the waves, as he threatened to do just 
now, which form would you choose?” inquired the 
master. 

Pedro laughed and bent over the side. Bertha 
clapped her hands. 

“ Oh, yes, let us each choose,” she said. “ That will 
be like the fairy tales.” 

Very good. The youngest first, then,” said her 
father. 

Pedro peeped through the box-glass, meditated, and 
said : ‘‘ I will be the angel-fish, and live in that scarlet 
sponge yonder.” 

“ I am the little sea-anemone,” said Bertha after a 
pause of reflection. ‘‘ Am I not a native Bermudian, 
a daughter of the soil? Rooted to this rock of mid- 
ocean, I shall live and die and fulfill my destiny.” 

“ You might do worse, my dear,” asserted Captain 
Cox, staunchly. 

“ Then I will be a fellow sea-anemone as well,” said 


SUBMARINE GARDENS 


93 


Henry Atherton. “ That big one beside the dainty 
pink star that you have chosen, I am sure.” 

The swaying motion of the boat brought youth and 
maiden a trifle nearer together, and he turned and 
looked into her eyes with a soft and wholly spontaneous 
meaning deeper than words in his own. Ah, sweet and 
natural link of sympathetic suggestion ! Bertha dis- 
covered new beauties in the unfolding tentacles visible 
in the depths gained from the half- jesting words of this 
new companion who had come so unexpectedly into her 
quiet existence. If she was the most lovely star of the 
flowers growing on the reef, he would take root beside 
her. What was his meaning.?^ 

“ Now for papa’s choice,” she urged, with a touch of 
feverish gaiety in the instinctive feminine attempt to 
escape from an embarrassing consciousness. 

“ I must be a sea-weed, I think, drifting aimlessly 
with the tide,” he rejoined, slowly. 

“ Oh, no, papa,” protested his daughter. 

‘‘ I might as well be transformed into a vegetable of 
the sea as remain a sort of human cabbage ashore. The 
algae are not to be despised, let me tell you. Linnaeus 
counted some two thousand varieties in his time. What 
do you say to the large laminaria that stretch fronds 
over twelve feet in length in the ocean ? On the whole, I 
prefer to be a gulf-weed, the zoster a marina, with a zone 
of over a quarter of the earth’s circumference, from the 
Gulf of Mexico to Nova Zembla, or to form a portion 
of those vast marine prairies, yellow, red and pink, 
with green stems and clusters of fruit of the Sea of 
Sargasso.” 

But his daughter shook her head. “ You should not 
call yourself a drifting weed, a human cabbage,” she 
demurred. 


94 


A BERMUDA LILY 


He shrugged his shoulders, amused by her serious- 
ness. “ I have it ! ” he exclaimed at length. “ I will 
be the cuttle-fish, hiding in its own ink in order to ful- 
fill Quintillian’s advice to his pupils : ‘ Be obscure that 
men may say, “ That must be deep, as even I could 
not understand it.” ’ ” 

In turn Captain Cox spoke, as he shook the ashes out 
of his pipe : ‘‘ A while ago a British bark was towed 
into Galveston which had been lying at the bottom for 
fifty years. They found in the captain’s cabin an iron 
chest just full of the rubbish of many voyages, reduced 
to pulp, and a leather bag or so of guineas. I’m such 
an old locker.” 

“ That will never do,” said niece Bertha. “ Fancy 
Uncle Tom christening himself an old sea-chest! You 
are not at all aged, sir, but quite in the prime of life.” 

“ Aye, my lass, I have reached the age already when 
it behooves a man to lower his sails and take in the 
ropes,” responded Captain Cox in a semi-dolorous 
strain. 

The officer opened his cigar-case with a scarcely 
perceptible expression of impatience. As a matter of 
fastidious taste, this environment of relations around 
Bertha irritated him. Why could she not be there, in 
her blue frock, gliding in a boat over the fairy gardens 
of tropical coral reefs alone with him, detached from 
all her surroundings ? Half-satirical, gentlemanly par- 
ents in shabby coats, and bluff old sea-faring uncles, 
make complications at times. 

“ If I must be alive and kicking I am a native Ber- 
mudian, too,” said the Captain, lending himself to the 
childish whim of the young people. “ I’m most like 
one of those turtles, first described by the early visitors 
to our Somers Archipelago as neither fish nor flesh. 


SUBMARINE GARDENS 


95 


lurking in the coves and bays to feed on sea-grass, like 
a heifer.” 

Pedro tapped Eric on the shoulder. ‘‘ What are you, 
Eric? ” 

The sailor blinked slowly, and answered in his gut- 
tural and indistinct tones : “ Ha ! ha ! A shark.” 

“ A shark! No! You are not nearly clever enough 
to be a shark. You are one of those red cow-fish 
floundering about down yonder,” retorted the boy, 
saucily. 

Eric grinned in slow acquiescence of the unflattering 
choice made for him by the pretty lad. 

“ Your friend did not care to visit our marine gar- 
dens,” said Everhard. 

The Lieutenant slightly elevated his eyebrows. “ My 
friend? You mean Kirby? Oh, he is on duty. I did 
not invite him,” he added, lowering his voice for Ber- 
tha’s ear alone. “ Two are company, you know, and 
three are not.” 

The color deepened in the girl’s downcast features. 
Did he thus intentionally separate them from their 
companions by an undercurrent of mutual interest? 

“ We must have some music soon,” said Everhard. 
“ Captain Kirby plays the French horn and the comet- 
a-piston, I think.” 

“ He does, to the delight or despair of his friends,” 
said Henry Atherton, mockingly. 

Time passed, the hours lapsing gently as the green 
waves flowed behind the keel. 

It was in the act of partaking of an abundant 
luncheon, provided by his own forethought, that Cap- 
tain Cox surprised his guests by an unexpected ebulli- 
tion of temper. Eric, with his hand on the helm, had 
been peering at the horizon for some time, unnoticed. 


96 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ The propeller’s coining in,” he said. 

Was there a gleam of malice in the eye of the half- 
witted sailor as he stated the fact, and even indicated 
a trail of smoke in the distance. His words produced 
on Captain Cox the effect of a galvanic shock. The 
little man bounced to his feet and launched a volley of 
expletives at the steamer, which Bertha, as the lady 
present, must needs feign not to hear. The habitually 
sanguine tints of his countenance deepened to purple, 
and his eyes sparkled with impotent wrath. He could 
not shake his fist at the object of his scorn, because he 
held a sandwich in his left hand and a tumbler of ale in 
his right. 

“ Aye, there you are, sneaking along to take the 
bread out of honest men’s mouths,” he shouted in ac- 
cents of rage. “ An ugly tub, to my thinking ! Steam 
and iron and modern inventions, eh.^ Just wait until 
a nor-wester catches ye, and heaves ye over into the 
trough of the sea, with your iron cases stove in, mebbe, 
and nothing for it but to founder like a log, when a 
good taut wooden vessel would ride out the storm! I 
wish the landlubbers aboard joy of your nasty, rolling, 
pitching gait, and not a dry rag on their backs, what 
with the swashing about ! ” Here the tumbler slipped 
from his grasp and broke. The Captain addressed an 
oath of nautical raciness to the fragments of glass, 
and kicked them aside. 

“Yes; the new screw steamer from New York is 
coming in,” said Everhard, shading his eyes with his 
hand to watch the progress of the visitor. 

Lieutenant Atherton glanced at Bertha, mirthfully. 

“ Uncle disapproves of steam taking the place of 
sails,” she whispered, apologetically. 

“ But steam is sure to win the day,” he retorted. 


SUBMARINE GARDENS 


97 


“ Is it ? I do not quite understand, only uncle is con- 
fident that it will bring disaster everywhere,” she said, 
simply. 

“ Extraordinary ! ” murmured the officer. ‘‘ One 
hears such a lot about swift transit, and all that sort 
of thing, don’t you know. I never trouble much with 
new-fangled ideas. It is not in my line. One must 
take this wicked world as one finds it.” 

With these words of wisdom intended for Bertha’s 
ear alone, the youth stretched his long limbs in a more 
comfortable posture and inspected his shoe in the effort 
to repress laughter. The irate Captain was a droll 
figure. There is something diverting in the anger of 
another person to the mere spectator. Pedro stole 
the Captain’s sandwich and crammed it, with merry 
pantomime, into the mouth of Eric. The latter groped 
under the seat for the ale bottle, and drank from it 
uninvited, while the Captain apostrophized the enemy 
with a most varied and lively volley of invectives and 
imprecations in a heat of personal indignation at its 
advent. The packet advanced steadily and passed 
along the coast almost within hail of the boat. 

“ A pretty, clean-cut craft,” was the comment of 
Everhard. 

“ Gammon ! ” fumed the Captain. “ I bet a doubloon 
she does not run half a dozen trips without getting 
disabled.” 

He worked himself into a fresh paroxysm of wrath 
by explaining to his brother-in-law the utter fallacy 
of new theories of shipbuilding, with gloomy prophe- 
cies as to the future. Everhard listened sympathetic- 
ally. Thus Captain Cox vented his spleen on all inno- 
vators, even as the Brest sailors saluted the machinery, 
pistons, wheels and boilers of the first steamer with the 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ maritime tongue.” Recalling his surroundings with 
a somewhat shamefaced glance at the others, he sub- 
sided abruptly on the bench. The propeller pursued 
its way. Progress was destined to crush the staunch 
mariner in a relentless course. Did not Ariosto curse 
energetically the new inventions of cannon and gun- 
powder Did not the Chevalier Bayard disdain the 
firearms destined to change the phases of war? Preju- 
dice, animosity, the conflict with prudent self-interest, 
were only another development of human egotism and 
idiosyncrasy in Captain Cox. 

The young people had dropped out of the conversa- 
tion. 

“ But you must always choose the right way,” said 
Bertha, perturbed by the badinage of her companion. 

‘‘No doubt. I wonder why the wrong roads always 
seem pleasanter, though. They call the downhill busi- 
ness the primrose path, do they not P ” 

Lieutenant Atherton and Pedro simultaneously bent 
over the side of the boat. A floating object had caught 
their eye, and each strove to grasp it. 

“ I’m before you, youngster,” teased the officer, 
plunging his arm into the water and securing the 
treasure. 

It proved to be one of those waifs of the ocean, a 
floating seed, such as make perilous voyages as far as 
the Orkney Islands, swept along by the Gulf Stream. 
The officer dried and polished the trophy with his 
pocket-handkerchief. 

“What is it, uncle?” demanded Bertha, glad to 
make a diversion. 

“ A traveler from the woodlands of Jamaica,” said 
Captain Cox, with a careless glance of recognition at 
the hard, brown seed. “ It grows on the roof-tree in 


SUBMARINE GARDENS 


a pod eight or nine feet long. Yes ; I’ve seen ’em afloat 
many a time. The natives call these beans cacoons.” 

The officer and Bertha continued to turn over the 
nut with interest. What message did it bring to them 
so alert to receive momentous impressions from the 
merest trifles on this auspicious day.? There was even 
a suggestion more remote than that of strange para- 
sites of West Indian vines climbing high and shedding 
down their fruits on the masses of verdure below; of 
such germs of plant life as the Kimiri of Sumatra and 
Malacca driven by the surf on the windward side of 
Keeling Island, or the cocoa-nut of Balci, the sago 
palm, Javanese teak, the dadass planted by the Malays, 
with their pepper; trunks of trees of red and white 
cedar ; and the blue gum of New Holland blown far by 
the monsoon. 

“ I must cut a date on the side of this nut and send 
it over to you as a souvenir,” said Henry Atherton, 
stowing away the cacoon in a pocket. 

Pedro withdrew to the bow of the boat and stood 
with folded arms, gazing out over the billows. Gradu- 
ally a first heated petulance that the stranger had 
seized the prize floating past the boat, yielded to a 
softened abstraction on the boy’s mobile features. He 
was subject to these dreamy moods, which seemed be- 
yond his years. 

Once more Everhard returned to a contemplation of 
the reef, and, sinking the box-glass below the surface, 
became a magician. 

“ Listen! ” he enjoined. 

All were silent, and a hushed calm seemed to fall on 
Nature. 

“ The Captain and Eric will swear to you that they 
have heard the tetraodon, known as the chouf-chouf. 


100 


A BERMUDA LILY 


making musical sounds, like the faint vibrations of 
bells or a gong, beneath the wave here,” continued the 
master. 

“ I’ve heard it humming away,” the Captain affirmed 
with a nod. 

“ I’ve heard it,” Eric echoed, slowly. 

The Lieutenant leaned over the water. “ It is aw- 
fully easy to fancy one hears all sorts of little crys- 
talline sounds in the sea,” he said, doubtfully. 

“ Probably the charming fables of the sirens were 
derived from the drum-fish,” suggested Everhard. 

“ Pedro, come and listen to the chouf-chouf,” coaxed 
Bertha. “ Pedro has an ear like a cat or an owl.” 

The boy glanced, half wearily, over his shoulder. 
“ No ! I do not wish to be a fish,” he mused. “ I would 
rather be a bird and have wings to fly away.” 

The master put aside the marine glass, and also re- 
garded the sea. 

“ Triton blows on his twisted shell and the Nereids 
rise from their caves far in the west,” he said. “ As 
a man-child, Pedro, you need no other wings than your 
own thoughts to traverse the limitless ocean of space 
and penetrate profound abysses.” 

The boat, holding human elements destined to shape 
the future of each other, turned homeward. 

Bertha sighed involuntarily. 


CHAPTER IX 


EVENING 

“ Is it true, master? ” queried Pedro. 

“ Well? ” rejoined Everhard, calmly. 

“ If a man started from the mouth of the Amazon, 
and went around the globe on the line of the equator, 
he would travel twenty-five thousand miles and return 
to the same spot,” said Pedro. 

“ Could he do so, really, papa? ” added Bertha. 

“ Try it,” retorted Everhard, taking a zither from 
the coverings and placing it on a table with other 
musical instruments. 

Pedro pouted and kicked a pebble with his foot. 
“ Captain says so,” he murmured, after a pause. 

“ The Captain says many things, child. Take care 
that he is not chaffing you too much,” said Everhard, 
gravely. “ Better grow a pair of wings, ride on the 
curled cloud and point the tempest. Who knows if 
here in Bermuda we do not all belong to the races of 
migratory birds, the wild swans of classical fables 
changed into men.” 

“A jolly idea!” exclaimed Henry Atherton, light- 
ing a cigar. 

Captain Kirby raised his comet to his lips and 
sounded a few notes. 

‘‘ Music governs the world, according to worthy 
Martin Luther,” said Lieutenant Atherton in a tone of 
mock rapture, seating himself on the end of the table 
101 


102 


A BERMUDA LILY 


with his hands in his pockets. “ Now we shall hear 
something rare. Blaze away, old man ! ” 

Whereupon Captain Kirby laid the instrument on the 
table and in turn lighted a cigar. 

“ Oh, I hope you will play for us,” said Bertha, as 
anxious hostess. Then she directed a glance intended 
to be one of severe reproach at Lieutenant Atherton. 

“ Could you accompany me on the piano ? ” said the 
amateur. 

“We have no piano,” she replied, regretfully. “ My 
cousins at St. Georges have one, and are good musi- 
cians, but here the instrument would soon rust in the 
sea air.” 

“ A fig for all the jangling pianos in the world,” 
said the host, laughing. “ Give me a violin, a flute, a 
harp of some shape, instead. Where one mortal affords 
pleasure to poor humanity by perfected instrumenta- 
tion on the pianoforte, how many only inflict torture! 
There should be some sort of a Desert of Sahara for 
the banishment of the learners of scales and finger exer- 
cises of all nations.” 

The evening hour was warm and balmy with the 
fragrance of flowers. A placid stillness pervaded all 
nature, and imparted a dreamy sense of tranquility to 
the group gathered outside the door of the cottage of 
the headland. In the very atmosphere there was a feel- 
ing of vast expanse, sea and horizon being still faintly 
colored by the earlier glories of sunset, while the 
heavens bent over all, benign, magnificent, unfathom- 
able, garnished by the spirit of God with constellations 
innumerable, sparkling in masses, trembling in spirals 
of light, gathered in a soft zone of mild radiance which 
shed down on the exile Everhard and his guests, here 
a beam that had been traversing space for years to 


EVENING 


103 


touch with a spear of flame the humble roof of the 
cottage and there revealing only the faint ray of other 
planets, satellites and meteors hastening on distant mis- 
sions of the universe in the dim shadow of unknown 
ages. In the far south Canopus shone with a clear 
lustre, Sirius pulsed from blue to red in ceaseless rapid- 
ity of vibration, and Mercury, rushing through space, 
did not halt to drop into some black chasm of a rent 
furnace in the sun. 

The companions of an hour received the impressions 
of their surroundings in diflPerent mood. The host 
smoked his long-stemmed cherrywood pipe and paced 
the path, as if restless and oppressed by his own 
thoughts. Captain Kirby gazed at the starry sky with 
pleasure, lifted to some transient impulse of resolution 
of achievement in the world instead of idly drifting. 
What aim should he pursue to raise him above his fel- 
lows in deeds of valor, science or art.? Henry Atherton 
and Bertha looked at each other with doubt, mingled 
with a sweet wonder. The present moment of pro- 
pinquity formed an entire universe apart to them. The 
boy Pedro flitted here and there, now sporting with 
the monkey and the black cat, and again shuddering, 
as if some chill fear swept over his spirit in the very 
splendor of the night. Eric sat on the doorstep in dull 
abstraction. 

The trip to the North Rock had been followed in a 
few days by the unexpected advent of the two young 
men in acceptance of a general invitation to have some 
music. Captain Kirby, urged by his friend, brought 
his cornet under his arm. Henry Atherton was eager 
to see Bertha again. His heart was very soft towards 
the pretty girl. If he was falling in love with her he 
could not help it. Besides, was there not a certain 


104 


A BERMUDA LELY 


attraction in cherishing a secret emotion of any sort 
on a desert isle? The walk over from camp was a mere 
casual stroll to the visitors. Captain Kirby had been 
enticed on the ground that the German had really re- 
fined tastes, poor man, and wished to hear the cornet 
performed. The amateur complacently consented to 
thus gratify Everhard. The Lieutenant indulged in 
a hearty fit of hilarity at the expense of his friend, in 
his own quarters, and said outside : “ Come along ! ” 

The German received them courteously. 

“ A fine evening,” Captain Kirby made comment. 

“ Yes,” replied Everhard, knitting his brows. “ By 
night an atheist half believes in a God, you know.” 

Captain Kirby laughed uneasily. 

“ I should think so on such a night,” he assented. 
“ In this secluded paradise which you have chosen, for 
example, one might hope just to dream away existence 
without too much trouble about the present or the 
future.” 

Everhard measured the younger man with a half- 
satirical scrutiny. 

“ A man’s moral destiny may weigh heavily upon 
him, at times, even on a Bermuda reef,” he said, at 
length. 

“ At least you do not need to bother about creeds 
here, any more than the home government requires to 
send engineers to see to the fortifications when Nature 
has built up no end of fortifications out of coral rock,” 
said Henry Atherton. “ What rot it all is ! I mean 
the service, and packing us off to the ends of the earth.” 
Then, fearing some implied slight to his present sur- 
rounding, he continued, hastily : “ When one lives on 
an island one can be quite independent of all the world.” 

Everhard raised his eyebrows a trifle. “ Yes ; islands 


EVENING 


105 


may serve as a refuge for the waifs of humanity, like 
the birds of Aristophanes. We must not forget Bishop 
Berkeley here, though, and his schemes of college build- 
ing for North America.” 

“ A wise old party, was he not ? ” questioned Lieuten- 
ant Atherton, easily. 

“ Truly a wise old party,” said Everhard, smiling. 

Then the group, brought together by chance, made 
music beneath the stars each in his own fashion. The 
resources of the household were collected and placed on 
the table with a tray of coffee, liqueurs and cigars. 
Pedro even brought out the harp, wrapped in a cover 
of green baize, at the bidding of the master. 

“ My daughter plays the harp fairly well,” said 
Everhard. 

“ I do nothing really well,” said Bertha. ‘‘ Papa 
has taught me the use of several instruments. That 
is all.” 

As hostess she seated herself at the harp. She was a 
pretty figure in the twilight, with her fingers wandering 
over the strings. In the estimation of Henry Atherton, 
a temperament ever susceptible to similar impressions, 
she was in harmony with her surroundings of tranquil 
sea and sky. Was she not a maiden clothed in the 
witchery of Fancy’s rainbow tints, instead of apper- 
taining to the bleak and nude realities of existence on 
the Bermuda headland Not that it mattered much to 
him in the whiling away of an idle hour. A first shy- 
ness yielded place to a certain fervor of joy in the mere 
delight of outward expression, and Bertha rendered 
several tender little melodies, adapted by her father, 
with the touch of feeling that makes the harp the in- 
strument of the soul. 

“ Brava ! ” exclaimed Everhard. “ If you only ap- 


106 


A BERMUDA LILY 


plied yourself to study conscientiously, my girl, you 
might play well.” 

“ Yes,” murmured his daughter, bowing her head 
with contrition at her own negligence. 

Captain Kirby next awoke the echoes with his comet, 
rendering accurately the First Love Waltz of Mr. 
Henry Farnham. Then he lapsed into snatches of 
melody, with the confession to his courteously attentive 
host, in pausing, slightly breathlessly: 

“ Some little things of my own, you know.” 

“ Why not set up the trombone or the saxhorn 
here ? ” taunted the Lieutenant. “ If Kirby takes to 
the flute the fellows of our mess have threatened to 
drown him in Harrington Sound. The flute is so hor- 
ribly low and depressing.” 

Pedro looked at the last speaker with a flash of 
malice in his eyes, and vanished. 

“Which is your favorite.?” inquired Everhard. 

It was Captain Kirby’s turn for chaflP. 

“ Atherton cannot manage even a Jew’s harp or a 
banjo,” he said loftily. 

At this moment there stole forth from a clump of 
oleanders the clear note of a pipe, blithe, rhythmical in 
cadence, yet weird, with a prolonged, sobbing intona- 
tion of sadness in an insistence of half reiteration, 
like the sound of waves on the strand. 

Captain Kirby listened. “ Who is that ? ” he de- 
manded, quickly. 

The host made a gesture of indulgence. “ Only 
Pedro. He is one of my pupils. The boy has a sensi- 
tive ear for music.” 

Pedro approached, playing on a little Indian flute, 
which might have been fashioned by Olympas, the 
Phrygian. The monkey hopped after him, in comical 


EVENING 


107 


pantomime. The lad paused before Eric, seated on 
the doorstep, and said, imperiously : “ Dance, Eric ! ” 

The sailor, with an expression of awakened intelli- 
gence in his dull eyes, arose, began to shuffle about in 
awkward capers, and sing in a low tone a strange song. 
Everhard observed him attentively, motioned Pedro to 
cease playing, and laid his hand on the shoulder of his 
uncouth protege. 

“ Sing the Swedish words again, Eric,” he enjoined. 

Eric’s face clouded; he shook his head, and his gaze 
turned earthward. 

“ Music is a medicine to lowered faculties,” said 
Everhard, abandoning his experiment somewhat petu- 
lantly. 

“ You believe it.?^ ” said Captain Kirby. 

“ Of course. Am I not bound to agree with Homer, 
Ulysses and King Saul? ” 

Pedro skipped up to Lieutenant Atherton with a 
final flourish on his pipe, his face beaming with mirth. 

“You like the flute?” was his saucy query. 

“ I like your flute, little imp ! I never heard any 
melody as charmingly elfin in my life,” said the young 
man, good-naturedly. 

Captain Kirby passed his hand over the boy’s curls. 

“Yes; we like it awfully,” he added. “You must 
give me some lessons.” 

“ It is easy enough,” retorted Pedro, carelessly. 

“ When I touch a violin I am always amused by the 
average idea of work in the world,” said the host, tak- 
ing up the instrument on the table. “ The violinist 
must study sixteen or eighteen hours a day from child- 
hood to attain any sort of proficiency. It is a painful 
and absorbing drudgery at the best. In what other 
walks of life does the student thus toil? The Oriental 


108 


A BERMUDA LELY 


scholar may do so, and possibly the scientist; but how 
readily we pity ourselves for a few hours of serious 
application in the twenty-four! Only the votaries of 
fashion, the society of all lands, actually work hard, 
and that is in the pursuit of pleasure. The butterflies 
toil prodigiously to amuse themselves, and are only half 
diverted even then. To be sure, Goethe in his General- 
heichte exacts repentance for allowing to slip away any 
opportunity of enjoyment, as a sort of doctrine of 
supreme selfishness.” 

He handled the violin tenderly in speaking, essaying 
chords, arpeges and trills in a desultory manner. 

“ An old violin, evidently, brought to me from Lon- 
don by my brother-in-law, the Captain,” he continued, 
in response to the amateur’s inquiries. “ Who knows if 
it has a history.? One may make anything out of it, 
while striving to play, sometimes. I can fancy it whis- 
pers in my ear the lost secret of amber, golden varnish 
used by the masters of Cremona to preserve it through 
long centuries. Again it sighs forth an echo of Stainer, 
and the forests of Tyrol. At all events, it has a back 
of good maple and a deal front of suitable thickness 
to pitch the tone.” 

‘‘ I suppose music is still young,” remarked Captain 
Kirby, thoughtfully. 

“ Very young, where you are concerned,” said Lieu- 
tenant Atherton. 

“ Of course the Chinese have known half-tones for 
centuries, called lu, but the Celestial musical organiza- 
tion is not sufficiently developed to utilize them,” said 
Captain Kirby, ignoring the jiber. ‘‘ Also, we can cal- 
culate the ninths of tone, but we scarcely manipulate 
them, half-tones still serving us.” 


EVENING 


109 


“ I should hope so,” assented Henry Atherton, with 
gravity. 

“ What do you know about it ? ” said Captain Kirby, 
sharply. 

“ Perhaps a new art may be bom, even in our day, 
when our ear becomes more refined,” suggested Ever- 
hard, replacing the violin on the table. 

“ What a theme for really great composition these 
islands should be ! ” the amateur exclaimed with kind- 
hng enthusiasm, gnawing his moustache. “ If one 
could render a storm such as we had in the run down 
from Halifax.” 

“ Get the bandmaster to write out your ideas,” 
mocked the Lieutenant. 

“ You remember when Berlioz succeeded in obtaining 
a hearing at a concert for his Fantasie Dramatique on 
the tempest, a thunder-storm of unexampled violence 
burst over Paris,” said Everhard. “ Pray do not 
bring us bad weather with your inspirations on Ber- 
muda.” 

Pedro regarded Captain Kirby through half-closed 
eyes. He, alone, may have followed the thoughts of the 
dilettante ofiicer. He touched the arm of the latter and 
whispered : 

“ You must create the storm, and the wind comes 
with horns and pipes, quite suddenly, and there is always 
the sea in drums and heavy cymbals.” 

The next moment he shook off reverie, darted to 
Bertha’s side, and thrust a machete into her hand. 

“ Sing ! ” he said. 

“ Yes ; sing some of the Volksleider of simple folk,” 
urged her father. “ This is not a true zither, but it 
serves as one of those simple lyres of all races, which 


110 


A BERMUDA LILY 


had originally four strings, symbolical of the seasons, 
or the quarters of the heavens.” 

Bertha sang German peasant melodies in a fresh, 
pure voice, and Pedro watched her with bright eyes, 
while Eric drew near to listen. At length the boy, as- 
suming an air of mystery, led Everhard aside by the 
hand. The result was one of those coquettish little 
duets of the Vorarlberg, Bertha personated as the 
maiden a sennerinn who tends the summer flocks and 
sends a greeting from the Alp across an intervening 
valley to the chamois hunter, who responds from a dis- 
tant crag. 

Thus the evening hour waned, and Humboldt’s great 
clock, the eternal movements of the universe, pulsed on, 
with the myriads of stars overhead like a gigantic scarf 
thrown across the zenith. 

Henry Atherton drew near Bertha in the darkness. 

“ I like you best at the harp,” he said, softly. 

“ Oh, do you.? ” was the naive rejoinder. 

“ I have cut a date in the tropical nut. Will you 
always keep it as a souvenir of our sail together over 
the reefs ? ” and he slipped the cacoon into her hand. 

“ I will keep it,” she said, with a little tremor in her 
voice. 

In the subsequent leavetaking Lieutenant Atherton 
proposed, with eflPusion, to come over and dip into Ger- 
man literature a trifle, with his host. 

“ As often as you choose,” he assented, readily. 

“ The dear mother tongue ! ” exclaimed the young 
man. “ I am reminded of the home music of German 
families to-night.” 

Bertha and her father stood in the path and watched 
the departure of their guests. Everhard sent a Yodel 
ringing after them, to the delight of Pedro. 


EVENING 


111 


The lighthouse beacon shone forth in mild radiance. 
The girl looked at the earthly ray, joyful, wondering, 
and contented within its sphere. Her father gazed at 
the heavens once more. 

“ What mysterious mission do we fill in moving 
through space ? ” he mused. “ Surely we climb to the 
stars by steep paths. Os homird sublime dedity coelum 
que tueri jussit, et erect os ad sidera toller a vultus*' 


CHAPTER X 


THE MESSAGE OF AN OLD HOUSE 

The next morning Bertha examined the keepsake 
given to her by Henry Atherton in the twilight. The 
young man had cut, schoolboy fashion, with his pen- 
knife, in the hard shell, polished by the waves to a 
surface like mahogany, a date, and the words : “ Dinna 
forget 

The girl deciphered the line with emotion, rubbed the 
cacoon with her sleeve, pressed the nut against her 
cheek, and stored it away carefully in a box with her 
treasures. 

The grey donkey, with the little wagon, stood before 
the door. Everhard called his daughter impatiently. 
She hastened to obey the summons, and stowed away 
a small bundle in the vehicle. 

“ Your modest kit to visit your Aunt Ellen, eh.? ” 
said the master in amiable mood. 

“ Yes. I am to go over to the South Shore on an 
errand to a sick woman for Aunt Ellen,” she rejoined. 

The mission of parent and child was to inspect the 
mansion of Mrs. Hooper and report on certain matters 
to the owner. The absent relative commissioned Ever- 
hard to thus report on her Bermuda property with 
some especial injunction to Bertha concerning the air- 
ing of the furniture or the planting of the garden. 
Both enjoyed such an excursion. 

Everhard uttered an exclamation as the little vehicle 
119 


THE MESSAGE OF AN OLD HOUSE 113 


gained a point of road overlooking the sea. A vessel 
was coming into port. 

“ This time we have a fairy craft of pleasure, one of 
the yachts of the Yankee multi-millionaires, probably,” 
he said, shading his eyes with his hand to note the deli- 
cate lines of the ship. 

Bertha scarcely noticed the yacht, absorbed in her 
own reflections. Thus they reached their destination 
almost in silence. 

The house stood mute and deserted, the gate of rusty 
iron-work forming a barrier to all intrusion, between 
clumsy stone pillars, surmounted by a carved orna- 
ment resembling a pineapple. Rose Hill had all the 
dignity of the colonial mansion, even in neglect and 
decay. The path from the gate was all overgrown 
and damp. On the right hand and the left the pal- 
metto, banana and plantain, with glistening spikes of 
aloes, formed a nearly impenetrable mass of lower 
vegetation, while several tamarind, pepper, mahogany, 
magnolia and India-rubber trees arose above the slope. 
Cedar smoke floated from the chimney of a detached 
hut in the hollow, mingling with the heavy fragrance 
of hidden flowers, the alabaster trumpets of the datura, 
a riotous wealth of creepers, ipomoia and echites, 
purple and yellow, in the gloom of the thickets, inter- 
spersed with scarlet heliconia and hibiscus. 

Everhard paused on the path and glanced around. 
He observed with a certain cynicism this struggle of 
Nature in the selfish competition of an untrimmed gar- 
den, which so much resembled existence from the human 
point of view. Here swaying tendrils groped about 
for support, undetermined whether to remain vines or 
to try to become shrubs in the ranks of the vegetable 
kingdom; vigorous and aggressive neighbors climbed 


114s 


A BERMUDA LELY 


at all hazards, by stifling inoffensive companions, and 
overhead dominated the quiet and persistent growth of 
timber in the trees. A nutmeg lay on the ground, 
fallen from a bough, split, and with the delicate crimson 
caul of mace visible still surrounding the kernel. A 
grisly-looking centipede, surprised by the rude advent 
of a visitor, crawled across the open space to the safe 
refuge of the clump of prickly cecropia. 

“ Your Aunt Rachel is a foolish woman not to dwell 
here in peace and comfort,” proclaimed Everhard. 
“ Now, if I owned the place I would clear all this waste, 
allow full dominion to our superb Bermuda roses, and 
gradually gather all kinds of rare plants, compelling 
those from the most remote quarters of the globe to 
bloom here. I am confident they would thrive in our 
climate,” he reasoned, and stooped to pick up the 
nutmeg. 

Bertha hung on her father’s words. “ Would you 
like to live here? ” she inquired. 

Everhard shrugged his shoulders. “No! Noah’s 
Ark on the headland is always best adapted to my char- 
acter and circumstances.” 

He took the last letter of Mrs. Hooper from his 
pocket and gave it to his daughter to read over for 
directions. He regarded her meditatively, knitting 
his eyebrows. 

“ I have an idea that Rachel will leave you Rose 
Hill in her will, as her favorite niece,” he said, slowly. 

Bertha’s color came and went, and her eyes sparkled. 
“Am I her favorite niece?” she questioned, wonder- 
ingly. 

“ You are, my child,” he said, quietly. 

“ Oh, I should like to live at Rose Hill always — for- 
ever I ” cried the girl. 


THE MESSAGE OF AN OLD HOUSE 115 


The mansion, with closed portal and Venetian shut- 
ters, seemed to watch her from the shadow of the foli- 
age. She had loved the place from her very infancy. 
To-day it acquired a novel charm in the idle suggestion 
of her father. What was the message of the old house? 
Could she solve the riddle? Who would share the roof 
with her if her father refused to quit his cottage? 

Houses, with their surroundings, in all lands, interest 
or repel the observer, above all, the dreamer, like human 
faces. The new mansion of garish luxury may present 
a cold fa9ade of many casements to the passerby, while 
some neglected nook, with shadowy chambers ten- 
anted only by memories, roof yielding to the combined 
influences of sun and rain, and flowers blooming amidst 
a luxuriant waste of garden, lures the weary pilgrim 
to delightful contemplation. 

“ Ah, how happy I could be in such a home ! ” he 
sighs, and lives through a whole career entirely for- 
eign to his own sphere as he resumes his way. 

Everhard and his daughter approached the porch 
to visit the premises. A woman, followed by two half- 
grown lads, glided through the shrubbery to greet the 
visitors. She was tall and graceful, clad in a limp 
gown of red and yellow cotton, with an orange-colored 
’kerchief twisted around her black tresses, turban fash- 
ion, and large hoops of gold in her ears. Her com- 
plexion was pale bronze, her features fine and regular, 
and her dark eyes, shaded by level brows, calm and 
mild in expression. She was the type of Porto Rico, 
Spanish and Indian, rather than African. 

“ Good day, Aspasia,” said Everhard. 

“ Good day, sir,” she replied, in her soft and melodi- 
ous voice, with a brilliant smile which revealed white 


116 


A BERMUDA LELY 


teeth and imparted to her face the transient beauty of 
youth. 

She made a profound obeisance, and carried his hand 
to her lips. “ Salute the master,” she said to the boys, 
who followed her example, half unwillingly. 

Everhard frowned, but Bertha was pleased with the 
act of homage, and patted Aspasia on the shoulder. 

“ Shall I open the house, sir? ” 

“We are just looking about, as usual,” he rejoined. 

The guardian of Rose Hill inserted the key in the 
lock and opened the door. They entered the dark and 
spacious hall, and soon every window admitted the day- 
light. 

An hour later, Bertha was rambling through the 
waste of plants in the rear of the house when she came 
upon several white lilies growing on a terrace. She 
had not noticed them before. 

“ Here are some Bermuda lilies,” she said aloud. 
“ How sweet ! I will take them home to Pedro.” 

She pulled up a spray and ran back to her father. 

“Look!” she cried, making her way through the' 
shrubbery. 

“ Now you are the Angel of the Annunciation,” he 
said. 

“ I do not understand,” Bertha murmured, doubt- 
fully. 

“ Of course not,” retorted Everhard in somewhat 
peremptory accents. “ In reason you know nothing of 
art.” 


CHAPTER XI 


A KING OF FINANCE 

The yacht Seagull entered the harbor of St. Georges 
and dropped anchor. The owner, Mr. Albert Rainer, 
was on board with a party of guests, consisting of a 
member of Parliament, who was getting up a work on 
political economy ; a couple of globe-trotters, a colonial 
bishop, and an American politician. 

The fairy vessel of pleasure, as Everhard named it, 
had a charming setting in this enclosed space of waters, 
cerulean blue and beryl in tint, with delicate crystal 
reflections around the shores. The morning was clear 
and mild. The yacht seemed to catch the light on all 
the elegant, tapering lines of her form, the low sides, 
the slender masts and staunch funnel, the metal work 
of deck, bulwark, capstan and binnacle. Additional 
coquetry was perceptible in the amber-hued awnings, 
already spread, the festoons of multi-colored pennants 
strung in garlands from stem to stern which might have 
served as the ensign of every nation of the globe, all 
dominated by the Union J ack and the Stars and Stripes. 
Those blended shades of pearl perceptible in the mem- 
brane of the medusa cast on sandy shores, known as 
the Portuguese man-of-war, still tinged the beautiful 
voyager of the seas, as she poised lightly above her 
own reflection in the exquisite coral waves, which re- 
sembled ethereal vapor, all jeweled scintillations, sub- 
dued by cloudings of transparent shadows. The float- 
ing home had the most luxurious appointments of 
117 


118 


A BERMUDA LILY 


cabins in all modern upholstery of tempting divans, 
cushions, curtained nooks for lounging, gilded and pol- 
ished woodwork of cornice and wainscot, and the pic- 
tures and tapestry inserted as panels in the doors to 
afford agreeable objects of contemplation over pipe 
and cigar of marine scenes. The buffets of the dining- 
room displayed a sumptuous profusion of silver and 
crystal, with racks of champagne bottles in ice, punch- 
bowls, and piles of limes and lemons always visible 
through the adjacent door of the butler’s pantry. The 
kitchen of the yacht, hung with polished saucepans, 
was a shrine of culinary art nearly as important to the 
host as to the elder Dumas. A French chef, in white 
cap and jacket, presided amidst a nearly perpetual 
steam of soups, ragouts and sauces, while those alimen- 
tary perfumes of thyme, cloves, condiments, citron and 
vanilla, inseparable to the profession, floated out over 
the harbor. Few mortals in surveying the Seagull in 
this holiday aspect of life afloat would not have shared 
the opinion of Froude : “ To wander around the world 
in a hundred-ton schooner would be my highest realiza- 
tion of human felicity.” 

Mr. Albert Rainer had never before visited Bermuda 
on board a yacht. Indeed, at that date the visits of 
such dainty craft to the islands were rare. He ex- 
plained the matter in his easy and confidential way, 
thus : “ Poor Scrubbs built the yacht on an entirely 
new model. Meant to take no end of revenge for previ- 
ous defeat in regattas at home and abroad, and all that 
sort of thing; but he has joined the great majority 
instead. I bought the yacht and have taken my first 
run down into Bermuda waters. I call her Seagull 
rather than North Star, Fairy Queen or Swan, I may 
go in for racing, yet, and win the Cowes cup.” 


A KING OF FINANCE 


119 


Albert Rainer, known as a King of Finance in a day 
of copper, ice, oil, nitrate and wool kings, not men- 
tioned in the Almanack of Gotha, was a native of Ber- 
muda. He had not visited these reefs for many years. 
Why.P He shrank from the ordeal. He could scarcely 
explain the whim of coming even now, except for the 
purchase of this new toy of middle age, the yacht. In 
personal appearance he was a man of a plump and 
bland exterior, with a face smoothly shaven, terminat- 
ing in a round chin cleft by a truly cherubic dimple, 
and a pair of merry blue eyes. He had a mellow voice 
in harmony with this attractive physiognomy, capable 
of hearty laughter and genial inflections of tone. He 
was a celebrity, and enjoyed it. It would be difficult 
to define his legitimate calling, even in an age of fever- 
ish speculation in the markets of the world. He dabbled 
a little in everything, and a tide of untold wealth was 
supposed to flow perpetually through the white fingers 
usually toying with a gold-headed cane or twisting the 
links of a massive watch-chain. He was a banker, a 
stock broker, a merchant, a miner, a farmer on a 
gigantic scale, and a founder of syndicates in one. A 
hon vivanty not devoid of wit, whose wines, residence, 
eccentric equipages and club suppers were made the 
theme of daily gossip, the caricaturists of illustrated 
journals found a congenial and popular vein in car- 
toons which now represented the speculator as an acro- 
bat crossing a Niagara of impending bankruptcy on 
a tight rope, wielding a balancing-pole of stocks and 
bonds ; driving four-in-hands on the road to ruin ; or, 
again, crowned and enthroned on money bags, while 
shabby impecuniosity slunk away, wringing emaciated 
hands. He cracked all the nuts brought to him by 
fate. Bird of prey fashion, he ever watched, with keen 


120 


A BERMUDA LELY 


alertness, to capture passing opportunity by the hair. 

‘‘ Albert Rainer never goes back on his friends,” was 
the verdict of his admirers. “ Albert Rainer is inter- 
ested in such or such an enterprise, and he is usually 
considered to know what he is about,” was the additional 
assurance of that element of the public which is dazzled 
by success. 

Another portion of the community, the prudent, con- 
servative and old-fashioned folk, criticized his bold 
schemes with severe condemnation, finding his most 
innocent action and generous impulse alike specious, 
even iniquitous. To these moralists Mr. Albert Rainer 
was the Giant Gargantua who devours all the little 
pilgrims hidden in the salad. 

On this auspicious noonday after the arrival of the 
yacht, the owner paused on deck to give some orders, 
then jumped into a waiting boat, shaped like a shell, 
tinted pink and blue, with a silk flag drooping astern, 
and pulled by half a dozen sailors in the nattiest of 
costumes. He was clad in a yachting costume of white 
flannel, and his straw hat was encircled by a band of 
azure ribbon, on which was inscribed in golden letters 
the name Seagull. 

A crowd of spectators gathered to watch his disem- 
barkation. He was undisturbed by the evidence of 
curiosity. He was a celebrity everywhere. His arrival, 
quite unannounced here, naturally produced a ripple of 
excitement. 

A lank youth, with a pen thrust behind his ear, clerk 
in an adjacent shop, said: “He’s Albert Rainer, you 
know. I’ve read a lot about him in the American 
papers. He has had luck, if you like. Goodness! I 
wish I was in his shoes ! ” 

“ He’s a Bermudian,” added the tailor. “ I knew 


A KING OF FINANCE 


121 


him as a lad. He was office boy with Carey Brothers 
in his time.” 

The yachtsman stepped ashore and glanced around. 
All seemed to him unchanged in this little world which 
he recalled so vividly. There was a smell of tar and 
cordage in the air from the harbor, mingled with the 
rich fragrance of pineapples and the scent of oleander, 
lemon blossoms and the flowering sprays of the loquot 
plum-tree. The pubhc square was animated by the 
usual groups. Sober civilians went and came. Soldiers 
of the garrison passed, their uniforms making a spot of 
vivid scarlet in the hot sunshine. Negresses sat at the 
corner, selling the fruit from the cargoes of recently 
arrived vessels. The steep and irregular street, so nar- 
row that two-wheeled vehicles could not pass abreast, 
high walls enclosing gardens, buildings of yellowish 
tints in close proximity to each other, with palms, 
bananas and pepper trees raising crowns of foliage 
above parapets, here and there, impart a characteristic 
and Oriental aspect to St. George’s which resembles 
Mediterranean towns in architecture and coloring. 

Albert Rainer sought a building on the margin of 
the harbor which had all the exterior indications of a 
warehouse and the name of Carey Brothers on the 
faded sign. The firm was prosperous, influential and 
strictly punctilious in all the transaction of commerce 
undertaken. Carey Brothers were shipping merchants 
of the old type. The house had been established for 
several generations, having vessels trading with the 
West Indies, Virginia in quest of tobacco, the New- 
foundland fisheries, and England. Their relations had 
been intimate with New York, Boston, Salem and New 
Bedford in the good time earlier in the nineteenth cen- 
tury when packet and clipper ships spread wings of 


122 


A BERMUDA LILY 


sails, saucy, light craft taking advantage of all cur- 
rents, tides and favoring winds. Merchant shippers 
owned their cargoes then, and assumed all risks of 
transportation, profit and loss, instead of serving as 
brokers to receive orders for wheat, tea or indigo. 
Those were good old times, indeed! Bills of lading 
were made out with suitable formula of piety, such as : 
“ Shipped by the grace of God in good order, and well 
conditioned ” ; or, ‘‘ And so God send the good ship to 
her desired port in safety. Amen 1 ” 

Carey Brothers, three in number at the date of which 
we write, had a marked family resemblance in the mat- 
ter of florid complexion, grey hair and whiskers, and 
portly forms. They habitually wore white waistcoats, 
and fobs attached to chronometers of Regent Street 
manufacture. Tradition was upheld in the comfortable 
belief that the respectable prosperity of Bermuda rested 
much with their own personal influence, and were, in ad- 
dition, most loyal subjects of the vast British Empire. 
They were sound in all conventional principles, and 
cherished an innate sense of superiority to the States 
similar in kind to that felt by the free negro of the 
Bahamas met in Florida by Paul Bourget. A Carey 
was always represented in the House of Assembly. A 
Carey invariably married a lady of property, if not 
an actual heiress, in his own circle of society, thereby 
increasing the connection to the extent of occasionally 
entering a son in the church or the army. A Carey 
visited Europe or the American continent when dis- 
posed, but, as a rule, remained at home. Families and 
races, similarly placed, are not required to roam in 
search of a livelihood. They resemble the rock-loving 
oyster and mussel, growing a shell of sedentary well- 
being, like their ancestors, after an ebullition of youth- 


A KING OF FINANCE 


123 


ful restlessness in swimming about in free waters, by 
means of feathery oars of tentacles. The solid charac- 
teristics of intelligence and probity and the narrow 
prejudices of sphere were alike inherited by these island 
merchants. Carey Brothers scorned the town of Ham- 
ilton, as only a citizen of St. Georges can be expected 
to regard a rival, while Hamilton retaliated by looking 
down on St. Georges; then each invited the other to 
dine. 

Mr. Albert Rainer entered the enclosed space of 
veranda, traversed the passage, and climbed the narrow 
stairway to the offices. The place was littered with 
casks, tubes of wine, packages sewed up in hemp wrap- 
pings, and cases of fruit. All of these articles sug- 
gested the cargo of ships, from cocoanuts and pine- 
apples piled in corners, like cannon balls, harvest of 
the Island of Eleuthera, possibly, to bunches of bananas, 
red and green, hung from the ceiling of the vestibule, 
chandelier-wise. Prosaic flour barrels, hams, cheese 
and salted fish awaited customers. The atmosphere 
was redolent of rum, cognac, pepper, a tropical rich- 
ness of fruits and an underlying suggestion of petrol- 
eum, without which the odors of civilization would seem 
to be incomplete. 

How often the feet of Albert Rainer had tripped 
along this passageway! Careful parents placed their 
sons here when desirous of modeling their offspring on 
the edifying example of Carey Brothers. His widowed 
mother had thus acted before she died. Occasionally 
volatile youth escaped from the trammels of drudgery. 
Severely reprimanded by the senior partner for flagrant 
truancy, Albert Rainer had run away to the States to 
makes his fortune. He had never returned. 

He now paused on the threshold of the inner office 




A BERMUDA LDLY 


and glanced about the premises with a whimsical ex- 
pression, holding the gold knob of his cane to his lips. 
The members of the firm were absent. He left his card 
and strolled out once more. After all, it may be 
doubted that the golden rim of the guinea or the dollar 
framed more completely the sphere of the King of 
Finance than that of Carey Brothers. 

The visitor next hired a modest equipage, drawn by 
a sober brown horse and driven by a negro boy, and 
quitted the town. He enjoyed his incognito. The Ber- 
mudians did not then fly along the highway on a 
bicycle, although American gymnasts and French bon 
vivants did circulate on large-wheeled velocipedes at 
that date. Mr. Rainer trundled along, absorbed in 
his own meditations. He reached a farm-house, left his 
vehicle, and pursued his way on foot. The excursion 
was a pilgrimage to his early home. Soon the South 
Shore stretched before him. Ah, here were the fossil 
helix shells embedded in soft rock, the mangrove 
swamps, the brackish marsh land, with the tufts of 
coarse, crab grasses and wild sage, and the curious 
variety of soil, from light red clay, dark calcareous 
stratum to peat. It is a sorrowful waste, swept by 
southern gales, the air heavy and damp, enervating 
alike to mind and body, with billows rolling in from a 
horizon line of sullen clouds, tawny and white capped* 
He toiled through the loose sand, piled in fantastic 
wreaths by the latest gale, with deeper hillocks and 
ridges ever rising beyond. The man who had grown up 
in this region had small need to receive the instructive 
theories of modern science as to the cause of the eternal 
struggle of take and yield transpiring amidst the ele- 
ments of Nature in this deposit of wind-drift and cur- 
rent-drift of mid-ocean. 


A KING OF FINANCE 


125 


Wind, as a foe, has piled the sand up to the steeple 
of the church of Tremenach at Lentec, used in the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, while Saint Paul- 
de-Leon in Basse-Bretagne, a canton inhabited before 
1666, has been silted over to the depth of twenty feet. 
Wind, as a foe, in Bermuda has driven the sand inland, 
forming dunes and hills, burying cottages, farms and 
trees in a resistless progress of atonement for the 
gnawing away of coast ledges by the sea elsewhere. 
Thus aqueous agents seek to reduce and destroy, and 
the igneous to repair by forcing up the earth’s envelope. 
The accumulation in heights and the menace of minia- 
ture glaciers, licking every crevice of rock with tongues 
of sand in a sinuous creeping inland, is marked by no 
violence of landslip with crash of falling boulders, 
shrubs and stones: all is silent, stealthy, a smothering 
embrace of soft obliteration. Cedar, oleander, the 
ipomaea kescapray and the shore grape, coccoloha 
uvifera, strive, in vain, to stem the current of waste 
with a network of fibrous roots. 

Albert Rainer paused before his early home to note 
the slow yet sure process of destruction which had taken 
place since he left the spot. A bank of fine dust had 
been heaped against the outer walls of the little house, 
inch by inch, while roof and chimney were already be- 
sieged by the insidious foe. The place was sad, even 
desolate. The seal of a certain doom has been set on 
all things here. The visitor observed with a curious 
sentiment of personal sympathy which belonged to his 
temperament, the desperate struggle to escape the com- 
mon blight in the top of trees and shrubbery still 
visible yearning upward to the light and air, in the 
writhing distortion of parched grey vines battling for 
freedom and life in groping tangles of leaves and in 


126 


A BERMUDA LILY 


the unrippled calm surface of the conqueror where 
complete victory had been gained. 

‘‘ To struggle is useless,” he mused, tracing a furrow 
in the yielding surface with his cane. 

How truly was here verified the warning as to a 
man’s building his foundations in the sand! Such re- 
proach did not belong to his generation, for his mother, 
as a widow without resources, had been accorded refuge 
among the sand hills by a distant relative, when the 
locality was already menaced by the encroaching waves 
of drift. Sea and storm had combined to rob him of 
this foothold of Bermuda property, at least. 

He advanced, sinking to the knee and thigh at times, 
to gather a twig of juniper still growing on a project- 
ing boundary, and placed it carefully in his pocket- 
book as a souvenir. The spot was the grave of his 
childhood, and must ever remain a tomb of tender mem- 
ories. 

Then he trudged on, wandering far along the shore. 
From Spanish Rock he gazed over a wide expanse of 
ocean and half-submerged reefs, and made his way 
among the rocks of this coast, where the green waters 
fret around the coves and holes in the direction of 
Hungary Bay. The hermit crabs still trundled the 
heavy shells of the turho pica inland to try as new 
houses. 

“ Makes me feel like a boy again to be here,” quoth 
Mr. Rainer, seating himself on a ledge and clasping 
his hands about his knees. He recalled his mother’s 
songs and tales. They both had firmly believed that 
a sea-serpent was once stranded amidst the shoals of 
this very place, Hungary Bay, a marvelous creature 
with a glittering armor of scales and a crest on the 
head, like waving plumes, only when captured it all 


A KING OF FINANCE 


127 


crumbled and sank. Why not.?^ Neither mother nor 
son had mooted the possibility of a snake of South 
American rivers having been swept far by swift cur- 
rents, and the improbability of an ophidian remaining 
long beneath the surface of the water. They doubted 
such solution as a file of porpoises winding through the 
billows in serpentine evolutions in the distance. They 
used to ponder on the mysteries of the terrible sea by 
which their little world was environed, wide-eyed, the 
widow seated on these very stones, while he sought 
shells in the moist shingle. Surely gigantic reptiles of 
antediluvian size, armed with crocodile jaws, slimy ten- 
tacles and powerful, rudder-like tails and claws, might 
lurk in the vicinity of the South Shore amidst the 
wreck of vessels and masses of sargasso weed. Earlier 
in the nineteenth century the whale mother, accom- 
panied by her offspring, set the fashion of making a 
spring tour, arriving at Bermuda in March from polar 
seas, and proceeding thence around Cape Horn, return- 
ing to the north by way of the Aleutian Islands and 
Behring Straits the next summer, after circumnavigat- 
ing the two American continents. 

A girl sprang lightly along the shore from rock to 
rock. Her movements were buoyant with life and high 
spirits, and her fair face playful and arch in expres- 
sion. Her blonde hair, blown by the wind, escaped on 
her shoulders and she carried her hat under her arm. 

Mr. Rainer observed her critically and with his self- 
complacent smile. Of course this artless maiden was 
posing here to attract his attention. She was prob- 
ably the daughter of a farmer of the vicinity. The 
King of Finance was recognized as not a marrying 
man, but he enjoyed much popularity with the fair sex, 
old and young. 


128 


A BERMUDA LILY 


The girl paused and peered down into the water. 
She glanced around at him quickly, and beckoned for 
him to approach. Mr. Rainer complied, still smiling. 

“ Look ! ” cried the girl. “ There is something out 
yonder in the water. What is it.'’ Oh, could we 
reach it ? ” 

A dark object was bobbing up and down near the 
strand. He sprang down among the stones with the 
old boyish eagerness to secure a prize. The inanimate 
shape was now swept near, then disappeared beneath 
an incoming wave, only to emerge further on, drifting 
right and left. He knelt on the margin of a wet and 
slippery edge, lost his hat in a tide pool, waited, 
reached out towards an advancing billow, and grasped 
a bottle. He laughed as he recovered equilibrium, 
with arm and shoulder drenched, and confronted the 
girl. They looked at each other with interest. 

“ I hope you have not hurt yourself,” she said. 

“ Oh, no,” he replied. 

They examined the treasure trove together. The 
bottle was hermetically sealed, and a rolled fragment 
of paper was visible inside. The sea had brought to 
the shores of Bermuda one of those messages of fare- 
well confided to the deep by a foundering vessel. He 
struck the neck of the bottle with his cane, broke it, 
and removed the crumpled paper thus cast to the mercy 
of the waves. He spelled aloud, slowly: 

“ Straits of Magellan, on hoard the Blanche, IS 
August, 18 — , in 32° lat. north and Ji,6 lat, east. We 
are sinking. A storm has disabled our ship. We are 
four in a boat with two oars.'^ The words were blurred 
and illegible. 

A moment of silence ensued. The farewell greeting 
of dying men spoke to the hearts of the recipients 


A KING OF FINANCE 


129 


according to their respective natures. Mr. Rainer was 
the first to shake off any painful impression. 

“ I will give this slip of paper to Carey Brothers,” 
he said. “ Other ports should be notified.” 

His companion was chilled and awed. 

“ The poor sailors ! ” she murmured. “ Aunt Ellen 
will wish the rector to pray for their souls.” 

Her gaze strayed to the horizon, wistfully. 

“ The Prophet Jeremiah says: ‘ There is sorrow in 
the sea; it cannot he quiet,' How did the Prophet 
Jeremiah know, I wonder. He can not have ever seen 
the Atlantic, and the Pacific was not discovered in his 
day. Yet his words seem the very refrain of our South 
Shore.” 

“ Just so,” said Mr. Rainer. 

He was studying her closely through half-lowered 
eyelids, much as he was in the habit of contemplating 
a new singer, actress or dancer on the stage from his 
box at the theater. He decided that she was beautiful 
— perhaps more than beautiful in the sudden pallor of 
emotion, as color may ebb from the chalice of a flower. 
Evidently she was a highly strung young creature, full 
of nerve and caprices, needing a firm rein of guidance. 
He could master her if he tried. He set a little trap 
to bring her back to real life. 

“ I think we have met before. Was it at New York 
or Newport.^ ” 

“ Impossible ! ” she retorted, frankly. “ I have 
never left Bermuda in my life.” 

“No.? Allow me to help you with your hair. What 
a wealth of fair tresses you possess! A woman’s chief 
beauty is her hair, you know.” The King of Finance 
essayed to gather her fallen locks in his two hands. 


130 


A BERMUDA LILY 


Bertha Everhard gave him a glance of haughty 
surprise and recoiled a step. 

“ Thanks,” she said, coldly, and plaited the mass 
together rapidly and deftly. She bowed slightly, and 
walked away without another word. 

Mr. Rainer returned to the farmhouse where he had 
left his vehicle, and shared the noonday meal with the 
cheerful and hospitable family. Afterwards he once 
more emerged on the highway. He chose the longest 
road back to St. Georges. The hedges of palmetto 
stretched before him in the twilight, interspersed with 
prickly pear, nettles, the wild ipecacuanha, food of the 
caterpillar of the finest Bermuda butterfly, danais 
archippus, and the yellow Mexican poppy. Around 
the wayside cottages, all embowered in tamarisk, still 
glowed in the waning light the crimson flowers of the 
erythrina and scarlet bracts of the poinsettia. 

Who was the girl with the gold locks? He would 
see her again. 


CHAPTER XII 


A GIRL’S HERO 

A LOW line of scrub-covered hills with ridges of in- 
tervening sandy wastes, and a farm, surrounded by 
dilapidated outbuildings, in the foreground t such was 
the spot chosen for a mock fight held in the presence 
of the Governor and his staff. Modest civilians were 
at liberty to gather and witness the animated spectacle. 
The Engineers defended the heights and the infantry 
made the attack. The rattle of musketry resounded 
and smoke curled along the base of the hills. The peal 
of trumpets stirred a transient martial fibre in most 
listeners and the red uniforms gleamed through clouds 
of dust and sand. The fruit of onslaught and repulse, 
at first mechanical and perfunctory, waxed warm in 
swiftly succeeding moves. Wise military heads were 
aware that it would be imprudent to allow the rival 
forces to approach each other within arm’s length, lest 
with blood up, and emulation in different corps of the 
service aroused, play might become reality, with serious 
results, especially as the foot was an Irish regiment, 
and the Engineers, for the most part, English. Thus 
“ the thin, red line of heroes ” struggled along the 
flank of the hill, and all but flung themselves, with fiery 
impetuosity, on the entrenchments, when the word of 
command rang out to halt. 

‘‘ What a farce it all is ! ” said Everhard, resting 
one long, thin hand on the shoulder of Pedro. ‘‘War! 
Grown men facing each other in fine liveries — a badge 
131 


1S2 


A BERMUDA LILY 


of servitude ! — and ready to fly at each other’s throats 
by order of a superior, at the roll call of a drum, the 
note of a bugle.” 

The boy looked on quietly, passively, almost with 
indifference. At times a puzzled expression flitted 
across his features. 

“ Why are they doing it.? ” he inquired of his pro- 
tector. 

Everhard laughed softly in his beard. 

“ Well put, my boy. That would be a question diffi- 
cult to answer for the armies of the world. They 
break each other’s heads, hew off limbs, and slay on 
battlefields, and if interrogated, most of the ranks 
could not tell what it is all about. Foes in the cam- 
paign of to-day, they will be allies to-morrow in some 
new diplomatic combination. Truly ! What a farce ! ” 
He spoke in a musing vein, and as if moved by some 
remote retrospection rather than the spectacle before 
him. 

“Yes; it seems stupid!” assented Pedro, and his 
glance followed the flight of a bird, disturbed by the 
firing, that fluttered to the ground as if wounded, then 
winged its way to a safe distance. 

“ I would catch it under my hat, if it was hurt, and 
take it home for her to nurse,” he added, with a nod 
in the direction of Bertha. 

The girl made no response. The mock-fight was a 
brilliant pageant, because of the additional interest 
imparted by her own mood with thrilling possibilities 
of danger, and a marvelous scope for rapidity of 
action. She had turned a leaf in the book of life, and 
the fresh page dealt largely with military tactics, as 
expounded by a certain young sage, with the aid of a 
pocket-map of the fortifications. She ardently hoped 


A GIRL’S HERO 


133 


the defense of the height would hold out to the last 
moment, and breathlessly awaited the result. 

The struggle over, the soldiers dispersed to drink 
beer in somewhat refractory humor, the fun having 
been spoiled by stem discipline. The groups of scarlet 
uniforms made patches of vivid color amidst the ridges 
of sand, and the low growth of juniper, like gigantic 
cactus blossoms. What sombre touch of premonition 
depressed the spirit of Bertha as she regarded them 
with an instinctive feminine admiration.? Some of these 
fine stalwart men might live to serve in the Zulu, Sou- 
danese and Burmese campaigns of the future, but far 
above swept a cloud of dark portent, felt rather than 
perceived, by her own innate spiritual vision. Oh, what 
was it.? she asked herself, shaken by a nameless doubt 
and fear. The memory of that day remained indelibly 
stamped on her mind. 

Then there came springing lightly across the waste 
space from the improvised fortifications a young hero 
glittering in the golden trappings of war, a smile on 
his lips and an easy grace of health characterizing all 
his movements. A gallant young officer was the criti- 
cism of sober maturity. If not an immortal descended 
to earth, for a season, in the estimation of Bertha, 
surely he was akin to those mediaeval knights, clad in 
the linked mail of a courage strong to protect the weak 
and timid, of whom her father had early told her tales 
in the endless chain of German and Scandinavian leg- 
endary romance. Their glance met, that of the girl 
frankly pleased, without a trace of self-consciousness, 
that of the hero, soft, tender, even complacent, bask- 
ing in the warmth of her approval. Bertha knew no 
guile of coquetry wherewith to mask her own prefer- 
ences, and thereby enhance their value by all the subtle 


134 


A BERMUDA LILY 


phases of feminine caprice. Possibly in her sense of 
upright loyalty she would have scorned to use such 
pins and needles of a woman’s weapons. 

On the Bermuda Reef Henry Atherton held the fate 
of his fellow creatures in his careless grasp, unsus- 
pected by all, and most by himself. 

He shook hands with the German and his daughter, 
and gave Pedro a slight fillip on his curls which made 
the boy shake his head free with a petulant gesture. 

“We kept the enemy from storming the breach,” he 
said, laughing. “ Do you consider us capable of de- 
fending you should the Yankees attack these islands.? ” 

“No doubt,” said Bertha, gazing up at him with 
pride. 

He drew nearer to her side, and questioned playfully : 
“ What day is it ? ” 

Bertha elevated her eyebrows slightly, and pushed 
a tuft of grass with her shoe. 

“ The second of December, I think,” she replied, de- 
murely. 

“ I did not mean the day of the month,” he said 
with impatience. “ I told you the other day that it 
was an anniversary ; but I suppose you have forgotten 
all about it. I hoped you would remember.” 

“ It is your birthday,” said the girl, simply. “ In- 
deed I have not forgotten what you told me! I have 
thought of it ever since I awoke this morning.” 

He smiled at the innocence of the confession, yet 
accepted it as his due of homage. She was an honest 
little maid, and dealt in no wiles of prevarication. 
After all, he liked her all the better for it. One of your 
artful, tricky girls keeps a fellow much more on the 
stretch. 

“ How old am I ? ” he pursued, speaking in German. 


A GIRL’S HERO 


135 


“ Three - and - twenty,” said the docile Bertha, 
promptly. 

“ That is right. It is our secret, mind. Not another 
soul knows my name day on these blessed coral reefs; 
not even Kirby.” 

Across the field a second hero, also glittering in gold 
trappings, pushed back his cap, wiped his moistened 
brow, and surveyed the couple with his keen, light eyes. 

“ They are getting on very fast, those two,” he re- 
flected. “ It must be stopped at once. What a flat 
Harry is, to be sure.” 

The Governor approached the ambulance, which was 
drawn up near in event of accidents on the battlefield. 
He was accompanied by the Chief Justice, the Colonial 
Secretary, the Attorney General, and several Right 
Honorable members of the House of Parliament. A 
group of ladies and officers gathered near, and Mr. 
Albert Rainer, with his guests on board the yacht Sea- 
gull, were accorded a post of precedence. His Excel- 
lency was a conscientious personage who performed his 
duties punctiliously in the miniature kingdom over 
which he ruled. Whether appointment to his present 
position satisfied his own ambition in diplomatic ad- 
vancement, or was in any wise qualified for his mission, 
according to Froude, as were the Roman Proconsuls 
once upon a time, who were chosen from the ranks of 
trained statesmen holding high administrative offices at 
home, or owed his place solely to family influence, does 
not concern this narrative. An earlier governor had 
planted sage in the islands, which became an aromatic 
nuisance, even as well-meaning first settlers carried the 
rabbit to Australia to speedily devour the crops of the 
antipodes, while another ruler bestowed the English 
sparrow on New Zealand. In Bermuda modem prob- 


136 


A BERMUDA LILY 


lems of colonization had been attempted with coolie 
labor, and even transplanting certain families of 
Swedes, who speedily waxed discontented and fever- 
stricken. The present Governor tossed about the 
shuttlecock of the labor question, prohibitions, capital, 
Sunday closing and temperance acts with his legislative 
assembly. For the rest, he was something of a geolo- 
gist and a botanist, as all well-regulated governors 
should be. He had his own theories, which he was fond 
of expounding on public occasions, as to how Bermuda 
came to be there at all in the midst of the sea, and the 
plants which would best thrive in the soil, for the use 
of man, since the reefs actually existed as an estab- 
lished fact. In personal appearance he was tall, with 
aquiline features, prominent blue eyes, and a deep and 
permanent color across the cheeks and the bridge of the 
nose, suggestive of the sun of the Orient or after-din- 
ner lingering over the wine. The British military man 
was recognizable in his erect carriage. 

On the present occasion, no serious duties devolving 
on His Excellency, he proceeded to explain the re- 
sources of the ambulance to the ladies. A small boy, 
clad in holiday attire, was led forward by his proud 
parents to serve as an example of the wounded soldier, 
with many admonitory whispers and pushes. The 
Governor took him by the arm, with bland benevolence, 
and in the slightly hesitating tones habitual to him, 
stated : 

“ This soldier has been in rather a sharp engage- 
ment, and is badly wounded, and — er — all that sort 
of thing, you know. The surgeons will now lift him 
into the ambulance, and using all the appliances of 
science, may hope to render him comfortable for trans- 
fer to the hospital.” 


A GIRL’S HERO 


137 


The urchin’s eyes grew round with terror. In vain 
his mother, a buxom matron, nodded and smiled reas- 
suringly. He felt himself lost, riddled by bullets, like 
a target, by the soldiers’ musketry, or, at least, slaugh- 
tered by order of supreme authority, and to serve as a 
diversion to the assembled company. He uttered a 
whimper that ended in a howl, squirmed himself free 
and ran to his mother, hiding his face in the folds of 
her gown. 

“ Extraordinary ! ” murmured His Excellency, seek- 
ing in his purse a bright silver coin wherewith to allay 
the imaginary fears of juvenile cowardice, while the 
Chief Justice, a small, bearded gentleman of facetious 
humor, poked the victim with his cane. 

Then Pedro moved to the side of the Governor, 
looked up in his face with a charming smile, and said 
in his soft, lisping tones : “ Try me.” 

“ Eh ! Really ! A good lad,” said His Excellency, 
and resumed his explanations. 

Pedro was not diffident by nature, and now lent him- 
self to the part assumed with a graceful abandon that 
surprised the spectators. Who so limp, inert and ap- 
parently lifeless as the boy in the hands of the sur- 
geons and soldiers, with closed eyes, head fallen for- 
ward and a perceptible pallor creeping over the bloom 
of his dusky features. He allowed them to do with 
him as they liked. A surgeon whispered in the patient’s 
ear, jestingly, possibly finding him too much in earnest. 
The dimple in Pedro’s left cheek was perceptible for a 
moment, but his face immediately regained immobility. 
The ladies were much interested, and exclaimed in a 
discreet chorus: “What a pretty boy!” 

“ The poor fellow is in a bad way, I fear,” said His 
Excellency. “ Possibly a shell has exploded near the 


138 


A BERMUDA LILY 


entrenchments, and both his legs are shattered; will 
have to be amputated later. He seems to have fainted 
from pain and loss of blood. Very well done! Very 
good, indeed I ” 

Here Pedro opened one eye and frowned sharply. 
He hated pain and sickness of any sort with an in- 
stinctive repugnance. 

“Bah!” he ejaculated, and, slipping through the 
hands of his companions, he leaped to the ground and 
disappeared. 

“ Your Excellency must pardon him,” said Everhard, 
stepping forward with a look of amusement as much as 
of deference. “ He is a half-tamed creature, at the 
best.” 

The Governor stared at the German through his 
eyeglass. They had not met. 

“ Ah ! Really ! A clever lad. Half-breed, I should 
say. Negro blood ” 

“ I think not,” was the deliberate reply. “ Captain 
Cox picked him up at sea. Pardon me. He needs no 
pay.” 

“ Fancy the little beggar flouting such an awful 
muff* as the Governor,” said Lieutenant Atherton to 
Bertha, while the dignitary in question detained her 
father in earnest conversation. 

Mr. Rainer recognized Bertha and greeted her with 
his usual urbanity, insisting on being presented to her 
father. The affair of the bottle was detailed with much 
animation. 

“ What were you doing on the South Shore ? ” was 
the half-haughty interrogation of Everhard. 

“ I was over there on an errand for Aunt Ellen,” 
said Bertha. 


A GIRL’S HERO 


139 


The girl with the golden locks had not mentioned the 
circumstance of their chance meeting. The King of 
Finance bit his lip. 

Henry Atherton, ignoring the intruder, whispered 
to Bertha : “ When I claim a birthday gift, promise 
to give it to me.” 

“ Yes,” she said, half-unconsciously. 


CHAPTER XIII 


A BERMUDA LILY 

Twilight brought to the town of Hamilton the 
spectacle of a man-of-war, anchored at a short distance 
from the shore in the roadstead, illuminated with fes- 
toons of lamps from stem to stern. As the darkness 
increased, obscuring the white houses of the town in 
the shadow of trees and gardens and rendering opaque 
the outline of adjacent shores, flames of red, green 
and blue fires threw their radiance from the masts or 
bouquets of rockets shot high in the air to break in 
showers of stars. The ship’s boats and barges hung 
with Chinese lanterns, plied from the wharf to the 
Magnanimous, carrying guests. 

A group of ladies waited at the steps. They were 
Mrs. Russell and her two nieces from St. Georges. 
Bertha soon joined them, escorted by her father, who 
consigned her to the care of Aunt Ellen. A girl’s 
flrst ball, fraught with excitement and all the phases 
of delightful anticipation, had dawned for Bertha in 
this entertainment given for the ladies of the com- 
munity by the ship of war. Her father had evinced 
an unexpected interest in the occasion. The whim had 
seized his fancy to arrange even the girl’s costume him- 
self, with the aid of black Susan, as a tire woman, and 
Pedro. Everhard ransacked the Captain’s treasures 
for trinkets and silken tissues. 

“ You shall personate the Bermuda lily, my girl,” 
he said. 


140 


A BERMUDA LILY 


141 


He clad his daughter in her mother’s wedding dress, 
a narrow robe of lustrous white satin, on which he de- 
signed, with no unskilled brush, the flower of the An- 
nunciation in a spray athwart the draperies, and de- 
fined on the bodice. Supplemental folds of satin and 
gauze were carried up to the back of her head, hood- 
wise, and swept low over the corsage, revealing her 
neck encircled with amber beads, and framed her face, 
with the blonde hair twisted tightly, and secured in 
loops on the top with pins of gilded filagree work. Long 
white gloves covered her arms, and snowy satin shoes 
completed her toilette. When she was attired, Everhard 
fancifully showered a pinch of gold powdered foil on 
her hair, and unsparingly whitened the fairness of her 
cheek. ‘‘ Now let me look at you,” he said abruptly. 

He gazed at her in silence, and slightly knitted his 
brows. 

“ Strange,” he resumed, at length. “ I did not realize 
it. You are like the women of my race. You do not 
belong here.'"' 

She regarded him with surprise. 

“ Your great-aunts, or your grandmother would 
wear pearls,” he continued. 

“ And I have no pearls,” laughed the girl. 

“Truly, you are without jewels. Well! Hold your 
head high, and move slowly at the dance, child.” 

With these parting admonitions he had taken her to 
the meeting-place at the pier. The Governor had in- 
vited Everhard to dine, but the recluse had declined 
courteously and firmly. 

Never had one day been crowded with such brilliant 
incidents in the tranquil and obscure life of Bertha. 
A secret existed between herself and Henry Atherton. 
He gave her to understand that the link of mutual 


A BERMUDA LILY 


14 ^ 

confidence satisfied all the requirements of his heart on 
the occasion. His friend Kirby had not remembered 
the date, the intercourse of the young men being the 
reverse of sentimental. If his mother or his fiance had 
sent him pretty gifts the home mail was overdue. 

The balmy Bermuda night enveloped the magical 
scene, and the very atmosphere pulsed with light, mel- 
ody and the scents of gardens, at least to the youngest 
member of the party. The boat was a true cockle- 
shell craft of revelry sweeping along amidst wavering 
fires, and the oars seemed to flash scintillations from the 
smooth blades, as they dipped into the water in unison. 
Her eyes embraced the stately ship and the encircling 
shores with delight, and in her heart she decided that 
all these festivities were actually in honor of the birth- 
day of Lieutenant Atherton, only nobody knew it 
except herself. She cherished the confidence as children 
in school whisper follies to each other. 

“ Oh, I hope you will like my dress. Aunt Ellen,” 
sighed Bertha. 

“No doubt, my dear,” said Mrs. Russell, gently. 

“ A Bermuda lily, and we were to know nothing ! ” 
exclaimed the cousins. 

“ Not a bad idea,” admitted Matilda. 

“ Your father is something of an artist,” echoed 
Fanny. 

The ladies from St. Georges had not fatigued them- 
selves standing about in the sun at the sham fight of 
the morning, but kept their hair done up on crimping 
pins and in curl papers, while imparting finishing 
touches to their costumes. Frances Cox sighed deeply 
to be obliged to relinquish one diversion. The result 
of much study and preparation was that a lamp-shade 
and a post-package stepped on board the ship with a 


A BERMUDA LILY 


143 


Bermuda lily, under the chaperonage of an old lady 
with white hair, attired in a brown satin gown, who 
enjoyed the occasion no less than her companions. 

The plump and jolly Matilda personated the lamp- 
shade, with a skirt and corsage of yellow crepe, ad- 
justed in skillful folds and flounces, with a girdle of 
white ribbon. She wore on her head a high cap of 
yellow crepe, fastened with a white satin knot, while 
her feet were encased in black shoes and stockings and 
her hands in black kid gloves. 

Frances represented the post-office in a slim and 
natty garb of black, belted and corded here and there 
with a gold braid, seals made of red silk embroidered 
with designs stamped on the bodice and skirt in an 
eccentric fashion. A label of address in grey satin 
across the bust was inscribed in gold letters : “ H. M. S. 
Magnanimous, Hamilton Harbor.” 

Amidst the usual throng of “ Dianas,” Nights,” 
“ Queens,” “ Cinderellas ” and “ Witches ” of such fes- 
tivities the world over, there was a touch of audacity 
in the group, the spark of recklessness ever dormant in 
the feminine breast. Matilda’s yellow draperies might 
have emanated from the theater of Paris or Vienna. 

Lieutenant Atherton waited near the companionway 
as he drew on his white gloves and eagerly scanned new 
arrivals, in spite of the chaff of other men. 

“ Who is she, Harry ? ” the Commander inquired in 
passing. 

“ Never you mind,” was the prompt reply. 

When Mrs. Russell appeared he hastened forward to 
salute her, and speedily took possession of Bertha to 
bear her away in a first waltz. 

Frances Cox looked after the young couple. No 
cavalier had watched for her with impatience. She 


144 


A BERMUDA LILY 


was one of those egotists who estimate everything from 
a purely personal standpoint. Along the shining deck, 
with grim cannon draped in flags, hatchways and rail- 
ings decorated with flower garlands and palms, forming 
cool retreats, danced buoyant youth, the strong, en- 
circling arm of the officer swaying the girl’s light form 
like a reed. He drew her under the palms, paused, 
and held her off a pace, with a boldness of proprietor- 
ship which Bertha was too ignorant to resent, nay, 
rather enjoyed with a sweet submissiveness to his will. 

‘‘ Now let me look at you,” he said, imperiously. 
“ Charming! You are beautiful to-night, Bertha.” 

It was not the first time the young man had flattered 
a partner at a ball, but never before had such music 
reached the ear of this listener. 

When Bertha returned to the side of Aunt Ellen, 
Captain Kirby bowed stiffiy and requested a dance. 
The girl stated demurely that she was engaged, with 
the surprising development of aplomb which is so re- 
markable a trait in young maidens under similar cir- 
cumstances. She gave him the card on which Lieuten- 
ant Atherton had already scored many waltzes. Why 
not.? The latter pleased himself and was indifferent to 
criticism. Captain Kirby scanned Bertha coolly. She 
recoiled instinctively, wounded and disturbed, from the 
disapproval of his glance. Hostility, amounting to 
mutual irritation, sprang up between them. Kirby 
saw in Bertha an obstacle in the path, more or less 
serious. The father, with his German literature, on 
the headland, and even the mild-featured old aunt, now 
smiling on the couple, were to be suspected as accom- 
plices of an entanglement. 

Bertha presented the enemy to her cousins, and he 
led Fanny to a place in the lancers. 


A BERMUDA LILY 


145 


At this juncture, Mr. Albert Rainer, in the most 
correct evening dress, strolled on the deck, saluted his 
host, the Commander, and made his way to the side of 
Bertha. Why did this daughter of Eve extend her 
hand to this newcomer with unfeigned pleasure and 
zealously introduce him to her relatives She scarcely 
knew amidst so many novel experiences. Possibly a 
reaction from Captain Kirby’s cold and suspicious 
scrutiny to the genial, even sympathetic, approval of 
the yachtsman’s glance moved her unduly. He was a 
kind man, poor Bertha decided hastily. 

They took their places opposite Frances and Cap- 
tain Kirby, while Lieutenant Atherton secured the post 
on the right with Matilda, devoting himself to his smil- 
ing partner with airy gallantry and stealing glances 
at Bertha. How often a quadriUe at a ball may bring 
the human elements of rivalry and envy into full play. 
Frances Cox crossed rapiers with her vis-a-vis, bestow- 
ing much thoughtful attention on Mr. Rainer, every 
detail of whose personal history had been keenly dis- 
cussed in the family. Bertha had luck, if you like, the 
mature young lady decided. A chit like that, too; 
more boy than girl. 

“ I personate the Bermuda lily, you know,” Bertha 
confided to Mr. Rainer. 

“ I shall always like the flower henceforth,” he re- 
plied. 

“ My father designed my costume. He is so clever ! 
He says that my grandmother would have worn pearls.” 

“ Pearls would become you,” said her partner in 
deliberate accents. 

Then the girl recalled her father’s admonition to 
hold her head high, and move slowly. She became stiff 
and silent, even a trifle confused. 


146 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ Talk about children in pinafores ! ” mused Cousin 
Matilda, returning to her place with a twirl of her 
yellow lamp-shade draperies. “ If ever I saw a minx 
set her cap at a millionaire, her name is Bertha Ever- 
hard. Well ! I should have done the same in her place.” 

The quadrille over, Mr. Rainer did not take his fair 
charge back to her chaperone, but drew her aside in 
an alcove and insisted on serving her with an ice. It 
was so good of him to think of it, when she was flushing 
with the warmth and excitement of the hour, despite 
her lily pallor. 

‘‘ I must consult you,” said the King of Finance. 

“ Yes,” she assented, eating the delicious ice like a 
child. 

‘‘ I entertain a little on my yacht,” he continued, 
blandly. “Will you visit me there.? Stay! You 
should come in your pretty dress as the Bermuda lily, 
and rechristen the vessel. Consider yourself hostess, 
and choose the guests for a luncheon party.” 

Youth glanced at jaunty and affable maturity, and 
he felt the frank and merciless scrutiny in the very 
tissues of being. 

“ Oh, no ! ” she rejoined. “ I am not used to society. 
Aunt Ellen and my cousins receive much better.” 

Henry Atherton approached. “ Our waltz is begin- 
ning, fraiilein,” he said. 

Mrs. Russell lived her own youth over again in the 
triumph of her niece with all the pleasure of an un- 
spoiled nature. She sat among the other matrons and 
nodded in time to the music. She saw nothing amiss in 
the attitude of the young officer as a first suitor. 

Fanny’s costume was the success of the evening for 
amusing originality. The Commander presented her 
with a nosegay after supper. The sailors gathered in 


A BERMUDA LILY 


147 


ranks in the background and craned their necks to read 
the address on the human postal package when she 
passed. Frances accepted this interest with unruffled 
composure. She had made no illusions as she resorted 
to cosmetics for cheek and lip before the little mirror 
of her bower. To attract attention at a fancy ball she 
must divert by her garb rather than hope to win by the 
beauty of her face. Captain Kirby danced several 
times with the sisters. He took Frances to supper and 
conversed with unusual animation. All too soon the 
boat swept the party back to shore. 

“ My dress was admired even by the wife of the At- 
torney General,” remarked the lamp-shade, pensively. 
“ I hesitated about being a bag of bon-bons, aunty. 
There is such a duck of a costume in a fashion paper, 
blue satin drawn up at the neck with a cord, a little cap 
like a confectioner’s cornucopia on the head, and a 
reticule on the left arm full of sugar-plums.” 

“ You can choose that next time — when you are 
fatter,” suggested Frances, with the touch of asperity 
of the lean and wiry woman for sleek obesity. 

‘‘ I suppose that I am growing a little stout,” ad- 
mitted Matilda, with a sigh. 

“ Rather,” said Frances, with a short laugh. 

“ Your arms and shoulders are so pretty, Matilda,” 
said Bertha. 

“ Yes ; a woman needs to have her bones well covered 
with flesh for evening dress,” said Aunt Ellen. 

“ Oh, Fanny, how clever you are ! ” exclaimed 
Bertha. ‘‘ I am quite sure that your character was the 
very best alt the ball.” 

“ I thought of being a wasp, with some of those 
Turkish stuffs and mother’s striped silk shawl,” said 
Fanny. “ Of course the sting, under such circum- 


148 


A BERMUDA LILY 


stances, would be my tongue, with swift repartee and 
sharp criticism.” 

Then she bent over the young cousin and added: 
“ Lieutenant Atherton must be a sad flirt, my dear. 
His friend. Captain Kirby, more than hints he is en- 
gaged to a girl in England. The regiments usually 
have only engaged men when they come out here.” 

Matilda was detailing the latest trait of budding 
intelligence in her offspring to Aunt Ellen. 

Bertha smiled in the dark night. The words of 
Frances aroused no presentiment of doubt or evil in 
her heart. Did she not know better? 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE PARISH CHURCH 

A Sabbath stillness brooded over the island world. 
Modem materialism maintains that the hushed calm of 
the seventh day is attributable to the cessation of the 
fretting turmoil made by man ; the underlying quiet of 
Nature is ever the same. 

Aunt Ellen RusseU had not been rudely jostled by 
these new ideas in her modest sphere of life, and held 
firmly to conviction in a heavenly restfulness, the 
orderly habits of public conduct, and the peaceful medi- 
tations of Sunday. 

The bell of the parish church had tinkled sharply 
half an hour earlier, on the hill, and the morning serv- 
ice began. 

The old colonial sanctuary was full of memories of 
calm and stormy years. The porch was still adorned 
with the coats-of-arms of local families; the lion and 
the unicorn were proudly rampant above the chancel 
arch ; the narrow pulpit was perched high, with reading 
desk and communion table below, and the square pews, 
with their curtains and cushions of baize, were sugges- 
tive of mildew and dust. Tablets on the walls bore the 
names of passing generations, while several flagstones 
in the aisles, with armorial bearings, had the letters 
deeply cut in the stone, yet were half effaced by the 
feet of the worshippers. The adjacent churchyard 
held those monuments of brick, with lengthy epitaphs 
extolling the virtues of the defunct as weU as defining 
149 


150 


A BERMUDA LILY 


his social standing in life, which are characteristic of 
many New England towns, such as Newport or New- 
buryport. 

In the Bermuda parish church the visitor might 
readily note the recurrence of the name Russell on the 
mural tablets and tombstones, and link together the 
history of a respectable family of colonists, from such 
time as the nephew of Sir George Somers, Captain 
Matthew Somers, having piously conveyed the mortal 
remains of the Governor of Virginia home to England 
on board of a cedar pinnace, further bestirred himself 
to induce certain first settlers to seek the Coral Isles, 
under Richard More, down to the nineteenth century. 
In the lapsing seasons the rosy gleam of dawn came 
through the palmetto fronds, and the grey shadows of 
night fell cold on the graves. An ancestral Russell 
had come to Bermuda, storm-tossed by religious con- 
tentions and longing to breathe a freer air, like the 
Puritans of Plymouth. In a remote angle of the 
churchyard his history was traced on the marble thus : 

Mr. David Russell (sent hy Mr. David Russell^ his 
father y in ye ship Dorcas, Captain Watts, commander). 
Arrived in Bermuda ISSJf,. Wintered at St. Georges. 
Helped to begin this colony, furnishing English serv- 
ants and provisions. Married Mrs. Jane White, March 
ye ^6, 1646. Died May ye 25, 1700, Aetat. 86. Psal. 
27 - 10 .^^ 

Other Russells were buried near this first settler. 
The present member of the race, whose cradle the 
parish had been, a little old man wearing a brown wig, 
with a visage frosty yet kindly, like that of Smollet, 
seemed ever to salute the dust of those past generations 
to whom he owed his existence, as he trotted across the 
path and slipped into his place unobtrusively. His 


THE PARISH CHURCH 


151 


presence would have been sadly missed in the sanctuary, 
although his movements had all the pardonable irregu- 
larities of the medical man. 

He had scarcely seated himself in the square family 
pew when a young officer strolled into the church. 
Doctor Russell skipped briskly out into the aisle and 
offered the stranger a seat. The newcomer entered 
the pew and seated himself carelessly so that he com- 
manded a view of the interior of the place, including 
the organ loft, as well as the chancel. 

A girl in the gallery dropped her hymnal on the 
floor and stooped hastily to recover the book, with a 
flushed brow. A boy behind her tittered audibly. An 
old lady with a neat bonnet, adorned with a bunch of 
purple pansies, who played the organ, glanced at the 
youthful culprits with mild rebuke. The girl took up 
the Te Deum and sustained it in a fresh, pure con- 
tralto voice, while the boy chimed in with the sweet note 
of an untutored bird. The maiden was Bertha and the 
boy, Pedro. The blush had not faded from her cheek 
when the singing ceased, and she turned to whisper to 
Pedro : 

“ You know better than to laugh in church. It is 
very rude.” 

The boy pouted, frowned, left his seat, and went out 
into the churchyard, where he extended himself on one 
of the flat tombstones for a time, with his head propped 
on his hands and one foot swinging. Wearying of the 
spot, he arose and sprang away in the direction of the 
shore. His attention to religious duties was fitful at 
the best, and now, with all the conceit of a child, he 
hoped that his displeasure at being reprimanded 
sharply for so slight an offense as sudden mirth would 
be noticed and his voice missed. Why need the officer 


152 ! 


A BERMUDA LILY 


come there meddling? Some spark of jealousy, which 
was the germ of adolescence, kindled in his breast at 
the advent of the handsome Henry Atherton. With 
keen perception of chilling change, the boy was aware 
that his nurse, playfellow and preceptress, Bertha, was 
growing dull, abstracted, listless in the daily routine 
of life. 

She did not miss him, scarcely perceived his absence 
from the choir. Her heart beat with a quickened pulsa- 
tion as she stole a glance at the pew below, and met a 
responsive glance from the occupant full of subtle 
meaning. Was she glad or sorry to see him in the 
parish church? Her spirit was troubled, elated, doubt- 
ful. She trembled with expectation and dread of what 
might next happen. The young eyes in the gallery 
interrogated: “You here! Ah, why do you come?” 

The young eyes in the pew made answer : “ Have 
you not told me that you sing in this church of a Sun- 
day? ” 

“ I had forgotten all about it,” with feminine dis- 
trustfulness and confusion. 

“ I remember,” with soft, masculine reproachfulness. 

For Bertha all the life, warmth and color of the 
faded church centered in that intruder of the Russell 
pew, the young man bravely decked with gold bullion 
and embroideries on jacket, shoulder and sleeve, wear- 
ing his military garb with the easy grace which is sup- 
posed to fascinate the feminine fancy, from the debu- 
tante of a garrison ball to the nursery maid trundling 
a perambulator in a town square. 

For Lieutenant Atherton the golden glory of outer 
sunshine slanted through an adjacent window only to 
touch a girl’s blonde hair with a transient aureole. 
She charmed his senses and aroused his imagination to 


THE PARISH CHURCH 


153 


a lively activity. The most powerful incentive of at- 
traction and pursuit to him was that she represented 
forbidden fruit. Thus far in his juvenile career his 
sense of honor had never been especially severely tested. 
He had lounged into the parish church to meet her, 
after the earlier service of the garrison. If subsequent 
interviews, affinity, and even close intimacy, with the 
cottage on the headland resulted from the evening on 
shipboard he could not help it. He must associate with 
people in this banishment to the North American and 
West Indian station. Sympathy deepened to emotion 
in the discreet glances exchanged between pew and gal- 
lery as the service went on. 

When the clergyman ascended the narrow stairway 
to the giddy height of pulpit the congregation prepared 
to receive his precepts with due attention. Doctor 
Russell, having read the lessons at the clerk’s desk in 
a crisp tone, with the aid of gold-rimmed spectacles, 
now settled himself in a corner of the family pew with 
an expression of satisfaction. His wife quitted her 
throne of office before the organ, came to the front of 
the gallery, and drew a curtain unconsciously in such 
a way as to screen her niece from sight. Bertha ac- 
cepted the fiat of destiny with sudden contrition and 
made no attempt of feminine slyness and coquetry to 
circumvent elderly obtuseness and prudence. Lieuten- 
ant Atherton sighed and turned his gaze on the clergy- 
man. In the rear of the church Martha, in Sunday 
attire of most respectable aspect, noticed the presence 
of the officer with a smile of African humor rippling 
over her broad countenance. 

The clergyman, a tall, thin man of military bearing, 
with a pale wife and a brood of listless children, Saxon 
offspring of the tropics, whose lines of spiritual duties 


154? 


A BERMUDA LILY 


had been cast in Jamaica, Nassau and Turk’s Island, 
gave out his text : “ And say unto Ahab, * Take heed, 
and he quiet. ^ ” 

From the fear of the King of Judah in the presence 
of the allied armies of Syria and Pekalo gathered to- 
gether against him, the preacher drew warnings requi- 
site as to the true duties of life for each listener, in 
vigilance, determination and earnestness of purpose, 
balanced by resignation and hope. He bade his hearers 
to take heed, existence consisting of a listening, whether 
as students of Nature, critics of revelation, or inter- 
preters of history. Light will not come to careless and 
inattentive souls. We must take heed. All the powers 
of the intellect should be concentrated in order to detect 
the significance of things. When observation and re- 
flection on the world had been accorded full right then 
the flock was enjoined to be quiet in awaiting the inevit- 
able seasons of suspense, sorrow, silence. Life is 
danger, yet we act with heedlessness in climbing any 
chance cliff* to gather the flowers. Ahab, the king, 
was commanded to post his sentries and to wait and 
watch, and so must his hearers. 

The subject was fitting in the sunny tranquility of 
the parish church, where the memory of Bishop Berke- 
ley seemed to linger. The worthy prelate wished to 
found here St. Paul’s College, in 1724?, built from de- 
signs of Italian architecture for the benefit of the youth 
of the American continent. We may imagine Harvard, 
Columbia and Yale seeking education at Bermuda. The 
communion table was adorned with plate given by an 
English princess, of which the parish was as proud as 
the church of St. Georges in boasting similar donations 
from William III, with the Lion of the House of Orange 


THE PARISH CHURCH 


155 


emblazoned on shield, bason, paten, chalice, cup and 
strainer. 

An edifying discourse, the sermon was received with 
general satisfaction. It must ever be a curious study 
to follow the thoughts of an average congregation, the 
worldly cares and ambitions, the petty doubts and 
worries that will intrude on the best disposed listener 
while the clergyman is preaching. Thus the shepherd 
himself, while his eyes roamed over his audience, won- 
dered if he was to be given a five o’clock evening service 
on a remote islet gained only by means of a boat, in 
addition to other parochial duties, by an energetic 
Bishop of Newfoundland. Old Doctor Russell nodded 
a genial approval of a happy reference to the parable 
of the Sower, and the necessity of uprooting the thorns 
of pride, avarice and bigotry in the soul of man, yet 
misgivings as to certain revolutions in medical science 
taking place in the hospitals of New York, Paris and 
London at the date would intrude on his mind in a per- 
plexing fashion concerning the use of subtle alkalies. 
Aunt Ellen Russell in the gallery found refreshment in 
the awakening of memories of this fold, where she had 
played the organ and ruled the choir during her span 
of married life, still her thoughts strayed to her sister, 
absent in Europe, with all the fascination of the stay- 
at-home element in following the erratic course of a 
more daring spirit. 

The officer lent an inattentive ear to the homily, and 
it is to be feared that he accepted in a wholly literal, 
if not irreverent sense, the injunction to forget those 
things which are behind and reach forth to those which 
are before. 

Bertha heard the voice of the preacher only as a 
vague and distant murmur. She could not have re- 


150 


A BERMUDA LILY 


peated the text the next moment after it was given out. 
She meditated on the remarkable circumstance of Lieu- 
tenant Atherton’s seeking the parish church on this 
morning. Did he really come because she was there? 
The flattery of such a possibility set her pulses throb- 
bing. She had never before admired a young man or 
been noticed by one. The nature of the girl bloomed as 
some tropical blossom spurns the enfolding sheath and 
is revealed in snowy petals and chahce brimming with 
warmth and perfume. 

Martha, in her seat under the gallery, albeit she 
prided herself on a decorous deportment in church, and 
was fond of expounding the sentiments there received 
to her neighbors afterwards, felt a misgiving that a cold 
lunch was inadequate to the requirements of this Sun- 
day. She had adopted Bertha from the cradle, as one 
of her children. With a large, maternal benevolence 
Martha now understood, with a shrewd perception of 
the situation, that the presence of the officer was due 
to the attractions of Bertha. Of course Doctor Russell 
would invite the stranger in his pew home to lunch with 
true Bermuda hospitality. The faithful servant ceased 
to smile and drew down her brows in that black disc of 
a face, scrutinizing Henry Atherton as she had done in 
his sleep, on a former occasion. 

“ Mebbe the young gemmen is too easy and sure of 
having his own way in everything. La! Missy can 
teach him better after awhile,” she muttered. 

When the murmur of the clergyman’s voice ceased to 
intrude on her reveries, Bertha threw herself on her 
knees with unusual fervor, repeating the concluding 
words of the preacher : ‘‘ May we thus walk in newness 
of life.” 

The girl prayed ardently, wildly, the boon of heaven 


THE PARISH CHURCH 


157 


for the love, pure and undivided, of Henry Atherton, 
that she might be, not as a bird flying across his path, 
but the joy of a complete fulfillment. She made the 
petition with a sense of wonder and humility, and hid 
her face in her hands. 

The next moment she was returning the greetings of 
the object of her thoughts with demure gravity in the 
church porch. She presented him to Doctor Russell and 
his wife with creditable composure. The old couple 
urged him to return home with them to lunch. The 
officer accepted with alacrity. He manifested an inter- 
est in the relics of the colonial sanctuary, and won their 
good will on the spot. Bertha beamed with smiles of 
approbation of his bearing beneath her eyelashes. Mrs. 
Russell paused to gather a rosebud on the tomb of her 
three children in the churchyard. Martha had hast- 
ened to the house by a side path and resumed her red 
bandana turban and ample white apron, by the time 
the party reached the gate. 

Situated near Harrington Sound, that rectangular 
basin of land-locked waters separated from the sea at 
the southern end by a mere narrow band of sand, the 
homestead of the Russells presented the same aspect 
of cheerful tranquility as the parish church. It was 
the usual long, low, one-story structure of the islands, 
with white walls and green blinds, approached by paths 
of pulverized coral and framed in a ridge of sombre 
cedars with gnarled and stunted trunks. Palmetto, 
calabash, the Surinam cherry, loaded with ruddy fruit, 
and India rubber trees surrounded the mansion, with 
a margin of ragged plantain and banana mingled with 
the rosy bloom of oleander, and an occasional fiery 
cactus blossom, starring the odd, distorted plant. The 
roof was formed of thin slabs of white limestone to 


158 


A BERMUDA LILY 


collect the rainwater, conducted thence into the tank 
or reservoir with a sloping top, also purified to check 
evaporation. Only in tropical lands does the tank of 
rainwater attain a full significance of value. 

To Bertha the walk from church to Palmetto Lodge 
with Henry Atherton by her side was a rainbow bridge 
between banks of fiowers. He made inquiries concern- 
ing her father, the boy Pedro, and his tricks with the 
monkey, the fishing of Eric, and listened eagerly to her 
brief and shy replies. If the pleasure of accompanying 
the Russells home to luncheon had a single fault, in 
the estimation of the visitor, one would have inferred 
it was the absence of Everhard. The old physician 
heard a fresh version of the accident which cast Lieu- 
tenant Atherton on the charity of his relatives on the 
distant headland of the shore, and established a claim 
of acquaintance with himself. Aunt Ellen smiled on 
the young pair, with a swift matrimonial speculation 
such as she was wont to bestow on her fellow creatures 
under similar circumstances. She began to realize, 
with an awakened sense of amusement and curiosity, 
that her niece was a grown maiden, and no longer a 
child. 

The aspect of the house was inviting and comfort- 
able. An elderly dog lay on the step to guard the 
premises in the absence of the master, but was on too 
friendly terms with all the world to take the trouble to 
bark at any intruder. A sun-dial, consisting of a stone 
pillar mounted on a pedestal and tapering at the sum- 
mit, carved on the four sides with markings having 
proper relations to the plane of the surface in cruci- 
form, shell and hemispherical shapes, stood near a 
clump of Palma Christ! bushes, and had noted the pass- 
ing hours since the first Russell built the house. 


THE PARISH CHURCH 


159 


Lieutenant Atherton was ushered into a small room, 
darkened by closed shutters to a cool, green twilight 
atmosphere, with the beams of the ceiling and wainscot 
of cedar. The floor was laid of the same fragrant 
wood, polished with the fresh pulp of the bitter orange. 
It was a homely interior, the old-fashioned furniture 
covered with horsehair cloth and studded with brass 
nails. A ray of light touched a glass case of shells 
with a gleam of iridescence. Old houses have a distinct 
physiognomy, like humanity. Of all Bermuda dwell- 
ings this one would seem calculated to attract a lonely 
wayfarer, by day or by night, without fear of repulse, 
so benevolent was its aspect. Moreover, enticing odors 
usually pervaded the outer atmosphere, of hot pastry, 
roasting meats and spicy cakes, a fitting incense of 
such a domestic hearth. 

“ How awfully good of you to allow me to drop in 
to lunch,” said Henry Atherton, finding a pretext to 
again shake hands with Bertha during the absence of 
Mrs. Russell to remove her bonnet and substitute her 
best lace cap with purple ribbons. 

“ Oh, I only come here — that is — ” stammered the 
girl, and broke under the kindling fire of the young 
man’s glance. 

I think of you as the Bermuda lily, after the ball,” 
he added, softly. “ You should always wear white. 
Remember my birthday gift — when I claim it.” 

If the walk to Palmetto Lodge had been across a 
rainbow bridge the repast of noon was a true banquet 
to Bertha. She could not have told very accurately of 
what edibles she partook, nor could she have detailed 
the conversation, which was rendered gay, confidential 
and easy by the guest; but both seemed to her admir- 
able. 


160 


A BERMUDA LILY 


That evening when the last service of the parish 
church was over, the girl made an appeal to Aunt Ellen 
and Martha thus : “ I wish you would teach me to 
keep our house better — for poor papa.” 

Her hearers, mistress and maid, understood. 

“ Why, yes,” admitted Aunt Ellen, smiling. “ You 
treat your father abominably. I do not believe you 
have a cup and saucer in the cupboard uncracked or 
unchipped.” 

“ That’s it, you know,” sighed Bertha, hanging her 
head. 

Martha chuckled. “ Missy wants to know more 
about cooking, I shouldn’t wonder,” she opined. 

“ Of course I do,” assented Bertha with fervor. 

“ Bertha is growing up, and must soon be thinking 
of keeping house for a good husband,” said Aunt Ellen, 
mounting her favorite hobby of matrimony, for she 
was a skillful match-maker. 

“ I can never hope to equal your marmalade and 
orange wine, aunty, or Martha’s cassava puddings,” 
cried Bertha, blushing. 

The glow of sunset was shed on all the island world, 
tingeing the fronds of the palmetto trees, the crimson- 
veined stems of the bananas, and sent a parting shaft 
of day athwart the sun-dial. 

Martha had been seated on the step of her abode, 
drinking her evening cup of tea. She dwelt in one of 
the detached buildings of the property, a structure 
scarcely less primitive in dimensions than a hut, flanked 
by a large, irregular chimney, and with a door gained 
by a flight of dilapidated steps, the walls whitewashed 
to a dazzling purity. Martha had been here installed 
in her married state, and her offspring had gone forth 
from this cradle, without exception, dwarfed to insig- 


THE PARISH CHURCH 


161 


nificance by her own somewhat domineering claims to 
superiority as the best cook of the parish, and the con- 
fidante of her employers in many cases of illness. 

“ Mebbe missy would like her fortune told in de 
bottom of de cup,” hinted the negress, with another 
chuckle. “ I know it’s Sunday, ma’am, and use no 
cards, but tea grounds ain’t wicked on the seventh day. 
I’ll jest see who is cornin’ along de road to ask Miss 
Bertha to marry him.” 

“ Oh ! ” protested Bertha. 

“ There’s a sight o’ things to be foretold in tea 
leaves,” continued Martha, reversing the cup on the 
saucer, and turning it thrice. “ Here’s a tall gemmen 
in de top, and anoder in a great hurry to overtake him. 
’Pears like dey don’t agree. For sure dere’s a short 
man down at de bottom.” 

Aunt Ellen and Bertha listened, outwardly skeptical, 
yet swayed by that blending of feminine fancy and 
superstition which makes the country girl cross the 
palm of the strolling gypsy with a piece of money, 
and her town-bred sister wander into the mazes of clair- 
voyance, psychology and theosophy. 

“ When I was young we were told that there is 
always a lover whom one wishes to marry; a second 
who desires to marry one; and a third whom one does 
marry,” said Aunt Ellen, turning back in the direction 
of the house. 

‘‘Was uncle the third suitor.?” questioned Bertha, 
roguishly. 

“ No, my dear. He was my first and only lover,” 
replied the older woman proudly and with an inflection 
of triumph in her tone. Her glance embraced her 
little kingdom. She had been brought to Palmetto 
Lodge as a bride forty years before. She was a quiet 


16 ^ 


A BERMUDA LILY 


woman whose unobtrusive influence was felt by those 
about her as little short of authority. Accessible to 
the needs of her fellow creatures, and ever capable of 
despatching the allotted duties of the day without 
appearance of haste, in person she possessed the serene 
beauty of age, and the placidity of temper which soft- 
ens even the most rugged features with the lapse of 
years. No one had equally sound judgment if con- 
sulted in emergencies as Mrs. Russell, or such hoards 
of efficacious domestic receipts of balms, dried herbs 
and cordials in quaint receptacles. Womankind said: 
‘‘ Mrs. Russell’s advice is always good.” 

Escape from domestic thralldom meant seeking the 
parish church and seating herself before the organ. 
Since her wedding day the music of the rural sanctuary 
had been due to her modest instrumentation. The parlor 
organ was her own gift. Her ambition did not rest 
satisfied; she longed to endow the temple with a four- 
manual organ and master a daily cathedral service. 
She even dreamed, occasionally, of those marvelous 
modern adaptations attached to the keyboard, contain- 
ing orchestral effects of bells, drums and cymbals, 
worked by electrical pressure, yet under the control of 
the player. Those were precious hours of reverie in 
the church to the quiet old lady. The place became 
tenanted with friendly, if august, shapes at the bid- 
ding of her fingers. If she returned home after these 
recreations with an expression of abstraction it was 
because she had been in the company of Hilary, Bishop 
of Poictiers, Father of Latin Hymnody, St. Ambrose 
and St. Augustine. Stray leaves of old music found 
their way into her reverent keeping, either as gifts 
from clergymen who had enjoyed her hospitality, or 
through the medium of her brother, Samuel Cox of 


THE PARISH CHURCH 


163 


St. Georges, who had secured them from sales. Self- 
taught, she had acquired a certain familiarity with 
Greek, Syrian, Latin and German hymnody from Bun- 
sen’s Gesanghuchy Luther, Thomas Sternhold, groom 
of the Robes, to Henry VIII, cut to the heart by the 
ribaldry of his time, and Clement Marot, valet to 
Francis I, who was equally scandalized by his con- 
temporaries, and composed those psalms adopted by 
Theodore de Beze as the badge of the Huguenots, to 
Ephraem, the orthodox father, who taught his flock 
songs intended to counteract the pernicious melodies 
of Bar-Daisan, the Gnostic teacher of Edessa, in north- 
ern Mesopotamia. 

Mrs. Russell had never quitted her native islands or 
felt any inclination to do so other than a vague longing 
to visit certain London churches and attend such gath- 
erings as the Festival of the Three Choirs in Worces- 
ter Cathedral. Assuredly she would like to hear Dr. 
Bridge’s Repentance of Nineveh, or Dr. Parry’s St. 
Cecilia’s Day, or Dr. Mackenzie’s Rose of Sharon 
blended with themes of Bach and Mendelssohn. 

For the rest. Aunt Ellen was contented to remain 
one of the first mercies of humanity in her sphere, as 
the moss and lichens soften the harsh asperities of the 
earth. Christian sympathy gently expressed in the 
hour of sorrow, and unobtrusive aid at need, had ever 
been her especial mission. How many depressed and 
listless invalids from the States had been kindly warned 
not to rest on the damp stone boundary, lest the 
“ break-bone fever ” fall to their portion, by her cheer- 
ful voice, and found their way to her portal instead, 
to be refreshed by a glass of wine or a beaten egg in 
the darkened and cool interior of the dwelling! She 
was a notable housewife by heredity, as mistress of 


164f 


A BERMUDA LILY 


Palmetto Lodge. Were not all those dames of the 
Russell family, with tombs in the parish churchyard, 
lineal descendants of the British matron who, after the 
nunneries ceased to exist, pickled walnuts, onions and 
red cabbage in a delectable manner, was an adept in 
making damson cheese and Norfolk bifFens, cured her 
own hams and bacon, superintended the dairy and 
brew house, made elder, ginger, cowslip and gooseberry 
wine.f^ Transplanted to the tropics, the housewifely 
arts of Aunt Ellen naturally substituted for the black- 
berry and currant jams of rural England the mandam 
sauce of the West Indies, pungent with capsicum, chili 
and chopped mangoes, and pickles for “ sallets ” of 
leaves, buds and herbs, as well as American breakfast 
cereals for frumenty and clotted cream. 

Doctor Russell considered his most precious heirloom 
a commonplace book, a manuscript volume of the 
early seventeenth century, containing items of domestic 
and medical knowledge, inscribed by different hands. 
Bertha and her cousin Frances had pored over this 
work more than once with horrified interest. They 
acquired from these pages such valuable information 
as that a paste prepared of crushed snails and raw 
eggs would remove freckles, and a quart of pounded 
worms, mingled with a little white wine, cure bruises. 
“ The history of any private family, however humble, 
could illustrate the state and progress of society better 
than the most elaborate dissertation,” said Southey. 

Left alone, Martha resumed her seat on the stone 
step of her dwelling. She slowly drained the last drop 
from the prophetic teacup and continued to gaze 
into it. 

“ Dere’s a heap o’ trouble for missy between dese 


THE PARISH CHURCH 


165 


men, I can tell yer, only dere’s no use speakin’ out too 
plain to a young gal,” she soliloquized. 

Bertha spent Sunday at Palmetto Lodge and sang 
in the choir of the parish church as a part of her reli- 
gious education. On the present occasion she lingered 
on Monday morning to listen to words of wisdom from 
Martha in the detached kitchen on simple culinary 
rules, with a zeal never before manifested. Eventually 
she prepared for departure, somewhat ruefully, en- 
riched by the loan of a spit and several volumes 
hoarded by the Russell household, such as “ The Art 
of Cookery Made Plain and Easy,” by Mrs. Hannah 
Glasse ; ‘‘ The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected,” by 
William Rabisha ; “ Royal Cookery,” by Patrick 
Lamb ; and “ A Delightful Daily Exercise for Gentle- 
women,” issued by John Murrel in London, 1622. 

“ Remember the French saying, my dear : ‘ One be- 
comes a cook, but one is born a roaster.’ I anticipate 
you will learn to manage the spit nicely,” said Aunt 
Ellen, laughing. 

The old lady seated herself in her favorite armchair 
and took up her knitting. In the embrasure was a 
little table with slender legs, holding reels of silk 
and cotton, and a tiny pin-cushion in tiny compart- 
ments, while the top served as a work-basket. A small 
globe, which she was fond of studying when she had 
tidings of Mrs. Hooper, occupied a shelf above. She 
now turned the globe with a disengaged needle. She 
had traced the routes by sea and land taken by her 
sister. What if she drew a line for her niece.? Bertha 
would depart from her island cradle, and go out into 
the world, possibly to follow a soldier’s lot. Aunt 
Ellen built the air-castle with interest, not untinged by 
a still youthful romantic sentiment. Doctor Russell 


166 


A BERMUDA LILY 


bustled in. His wife dropped her work in her lap, 
leaned her head back in her chair and regarded him 
ruminatingly. 

“ What do you think of Lieutenant Atherton ? ” she 
demanded, significantly. 

The little doctor paused and reflected a moment. 

“ Eh ? The young man who took lunch here yester- 
day.? A pleasant lad enough.” 

“ Suppose he should ask our Bertha to marry him ? ” 
pursued Mrs. Russell. 

“ It is not very likely,” her husband replied, some- 
what dryly. “ Soldiers are not much to be depended 
upon. Besides, the garrison seldom marries in Ber- 
muda. It has always been different in Canada, you 
know, what with the sleighing parties and ice carni- 
vals.” 

Aunt Ellen bridled slightly. “ I don’t know. We 
have our chances as well. I remember Captain Blooms- 
bury ” 

“ That red-faced ruffian,” Doctor Russell inter- 
rupted, and laughed with the quite superfluous in- 
solence of a successful rival. 

“ He was considered one of the finest men ever sta- 
tioned at St. Georges,” said Aunt Ellen, firmly. 

“ Fiddlesticks ! ” retorted the Doctor. 

“ Perhaps Bertha may choose the young Lieuten- 
ant,” she persisted with gentle obstinacy. 

“ How you women run on,” remarked the old phy- 
sician. 


CHAPTER XV 


A CHRISTENING PARTY 

The advent of that fairy vessel, the yacht, in Ber- 
muda waters had made a little ripple of excitement 
among the islanders, as the owner had foreseen. Mr. 
Albert Rainer had readily won popularity with all 
classes of society. Dinners, lunches, and even a mati- 
nee dansante for the ladies had been given on board. 
Who so genial as host as the poor clerk returned to 
his former home in the triumph of successful maturity 
He may have derived genuine pleasure from the interest 
of his fellow islanders in his floating home. He fulfilled 
the requirements of Montaigne as the well-bred man 
who is sociable and complacent with everyone. He had 
consulted his cook and butler in serious debate with 
the result of an irreproachable diplomatic banquet 
given in honor of the Governor, his lady and other 
functionaries. 

“Now I must devote myself to some ’Mudians,” he 
mused, selecting a fresh card of semi-transparent ivory 
from a gilded casket on which to inscribe a menu, “ Eh ! 
happy thought! I must work up this idea to amuse 
my M. P. and the globe-trotters. It will be nuts to 
make those old buffers, Carey Brothers, dine with their 
humble servant. How does this read: 

“ Huitres pot age; consomme ala St. George; petites 
caisses soufflees a la Castle Harbor; rock fish a la DeviVs 
Hole; filet de boeuf a la Somerset; veau roti a la Ham- 
ilton; pommes de terre a la Hungary Bay; rognons a 
167 


16S 


A BERMUDA LILY 


la Joyce's Point; poulet a la Harrington Sound; salade 
a la Ireland Island; houdin a la Pembroke; glace a la 
Gibb's Hill; dessert assOrti a la Coral Reef." 

Carey Brothers attended the dinner on board the 
yacht. Circumstances do so alter cases. The worthy 
partners longed to confound Albert Rainer, flaunting 
the brazen effrontery of an unrighteous and probably 
precarious opulence in the eyes of his former acquaint- 
ances. However, they received his urbane overtures 
with the civility exacted by public opinion. The senior 
Carey made a neatly turned speech after the cham- 
pagne, to which his host responded with outward mani- 
festation of gratification and secret amusement. He 
enjoyed the situation. Hospitality did not cease with 
these efforts. Other feasts were spread for civilians 
and military guests when conversation may be said to 
have been animated with the entrees, warm with the 
roti, and noisy with the entremets and dessert. Between 
the “ pear and the cheese,” Mr. Rainer replenished his 
wine glass, leaned back in his plumply upholstered 
chair of leather, and discussed many matters of interest 
in the world. Such easy chats over trifles led to a 
gradual expansion of reciprocal confidence. Mr. 
Rainer was partially sincere, having no deep motive to 
be otherwise. 

“ A drop of honey catches more flies than a hogshead 
of vinegar,” says a homely proverb. 

The King of Finance went about the Coral Islands 
like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and wherever he passed 
the human mind was aroused from secure tranquility to 
a vertigo of giddy excitement and rash longings to 
double actual possessions. Accustomed to being sought 
by a very wide range of humanity in search of “ tips,” 
he listened patiently to old ladies, and gave advice in 


A CHRISTENING PARTY 


169 


matters of European and American railway stock, min- 
ing shares and land holding to sedate fathers of fam- 
ilies. He ventured to question the entire community, in 
a vein of playful banter, if Carey Brothers still taught 
them to keep their capital or savings in the best china 
teapot on the shelf. The magical influence of his per- 
sonality worked on the public in the most surprising 
manner. 

After the ball on board the ship of war, he made his 
way into the household of Doctor Russell at Harrington 
Sound, and speedily won the good graces of Aunt Ellen 
and Martha by reminiscences of his own childhood. He 
played a rubber of whist of an afternoon in a corner of 
the veranda of the Samuel Cox Emporium, and dined 
in the little house afterward, displaying a genial appre- 
ciation of certain aspirations of Mr. Smith and a mirth- 
ful affinity for the infants Smith, with a promise of toys 
in store. Even Frances became brilliant under his in- 
fluence. He bearded Captain Cox in his den, the 
nautical abode of the worthy man on shore, and insisted 
on carrying him off to give his opinion of the capacities 
of the yacht. These good folk had a mutual conviction 
that they admitted the returned son of the soil to the 
circle of home sympathies for which he had long pined 
among strangers. 

Then he sought the cottage on the headland and per- 
ceptibly intruded on Everhard. The two men regarded 
each other with tacit hostility, veiled under outward 
courtesy. Why We are so intertwined in the interests 
of life, one thread crossing and tangling with another 
more frequently than running smoothly in unison, that 
the knot of the present circumstance was manifest. 
Everhard’s mood was dull and taciturn. He shrank in- 
stinctively from the prosperous and bland visitor. Who 


170 


A BERMUDA LILY 


was Albert Rainer, owner of the yacht Seagull, that he 
should essay to stir the sluggish pulse of his own exist- 
ence? Bertha was cold and abstracted under the in- 
fluence of her father’s humor. Piqued by his reception, 
yet drawn to them by a novel sentiment of interest, Mr. 
Rainer stated his errand. He wished to have a final 
lunch on board his vessel, with a surprise in view. 
Bertha was to be the guest of honor and wear her cos- 
tume of the Bermuda lily. The girl listened with dawn- 
ing surprise and pleasure. 

“ It is very good of you to take so much trouble,” she 
said, simply. 

“ You will come to-morrow, then? ” he urged. 

“ Oh, yes,” she replied, and turned to her parent for 
confirmation. 

“ The Bermuda lily,” said Everhard, with a mocking 
salutation towards the plants brought from Rose Hill on 
the occasion of his last visit. “ Behold my daughter 
as priestess of the delicate flower, elsewhere known as 
dedicated to the Angel of the Annunciation and some- 
times called the lily of St. Louis. Here on the Coral 
Reef my daughter should cultivate lilies and dwell in 
the midst of them.” 

Mr. Rainer made his adieu and departed. 

“ A morbid atmosphere for a girl like that to live 
with a moony old father,” was the mental comment of 
this man of the world. 

Next morning the cook had appeared, in response 
to a summons, and stood on the threshold of the mas- 
ter’s cabin, deferentially, holding a strip of paper in 
his hand. 

“ That will do nicely,” said Mr. Rainer, glancing 
over the list of dishes. 

He opened a package and inscribed the names of his 


A CHRISTENING PARTY 


171 


guests on menu-cards prepared by an artist on the 
spot. The cards were of white satin with a lily de- 
signed in delicate outline. 

“We must have plenty of sweets, Boxall,” he said 
to the butler, inspecting the table and placing the cards. 
“ Bring out all the store of chocolate and bon-bons 
for the ladies.” 

“ Very good, sir,” replied the attentive menial. 

“ Welcome to the Bermuda lily on board my yacht,” 
said Mr. Rainer as Bertha stepped on board in her 
quaint white satin gown. 

She was followed by her aunts and cousins, while 
Doctor Russell, Samuel Cox, his son-in-law, and the 
Captain in high good-humor brought up the rear. 
The ladies were ushered into Mr. Rainer’s sanctum, a 
retreat as coquettish as a boudoir in all the appoint- 
ments of the toilette tables. Oriental rugs and Algerine 
hangings. Then they were conducted to table in a 
salon which had been converted into a snowy bower of 
flowers and crystal, with a satiny sheen on curtains 
and napery to enhance the effect. The central orna- 
ment was a lily, fashioned in sugar, while groups of 
artificial draperies of lace, muslin and tissues at the 
angles of the walls took the same shape. 

“ I must have my way to-day,” said the host, play- 
fully, and led Bertha to the place of honor on his right 
hand in defiance of all conventionality. The aunts were 
acquiescent and wondering; Frances silent. Bertha 
excused her father’s absence. She refrained from such 
further explanation as that Everhard had refused to 
accompany her, urging that his best coat was too 
shabby to lunch with a millionaire, and he had no time 
to order fresh habiliments from Paris or London. 

“ We are quite a family party,” remarked Mr. 


17 ^ 


A BERMUDA LELY 


Rainer in a cozy vein as the meal progressed. “ I 
have packed off my passengers on a long excursion.” 

Doctor Russell and the Captain brought up topics 
of general interest in the affairs of the islands, finding 
the host an attentive listener, while Samuel Cox and his 
son-in-law waxed loquacious. The two matrons beamed 
with pleasure. Stout Mrs. Cox reveled in a true feast 
of the Land of Cocaigne and consumed with serenity 
all the delicacies in whipped creams, pastry and iced 
fruits apportioned her. Aunt Ellen was naively 
pleased with the entertainment. Frances and Matilda 
admired the silver and crystal with feminine apprecia- 
tion. Bertha was perplexed rather than amused. She 
missed her father and Henry Atherton. 

“ I propose that we drink to the Bermuda lily,” said 
Mr. Rainer, turning to Bertha. “ Ladies, bid the 
charming flower bloom for me on this and all future 
occasions.” 

“ I call you a ladies’ man, if ever I saw one,” said 
Mrs. Cox, sipping her wine. 

“ Why, yes ; you can turn a phrase as well as the 
best stay-at-home Bermudian,” assented Dr. Russell. 

The host assumed an air of mystery, took Bertha by 
the hand to lead her away, and requested the other 
guests to follow. The girl was conducted to the bows, 
where the crew awaited the moment, a bottle of cham- 
pagne was given her, with a cord attached, and she was 
bidden to rechristen the yacht by breaking it over the 
side. A sailor in a boat removed a board, and the 
words appeared in shining characters: The Bermuda 
Lily, 

Mr. Rainer enjoyed the surprise. Bertha under- 
stood, and clapped her hands in delight. 

“Ah, now I know why I am given the place of 


A CHRISTENING PARTY 


173 


honor,” she cried. “ The beautiful yacht is the Ber- 
muda Lily. May she sail over calm seas ! ” 

“ Well spoken, my lass,” said Captain Cox. “ It is 
a pretty idea.” 

“ Will you take command of my craft ? ” queried 
the owner. “We can voyage far.” 

Bertha laughed gleefully. 

“ Shall we sail quite around the world.? ” she re- 
torted, frankly and without a trace of embarrassment. 
“ Uncle Tom must steer, in that case.” 

When his guests departed the host said: 

“ I will soon return.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


ONCE AND FOREVER 

The lighthouse rises on Gibb’s Hill in a white shaft. 
The tower is majestic, even in the day, when no gleam 
is shed forth from the lamp, as dominating the sur- 
rounding waters. 

Two people emerged on the gallery surrounding the 
tower. A man and a girl braved the gusts of wind, 
he bracing himself against the structure and sheltering 
his companion. Their situation seemed one of peril, 
outside the slender shaft. Imagination readily sup- 
plied the shock of vibrations to the building, as if it 
was about to sway, a feeble reed in the grasp of the 
elements, and topple to the ground. 

“ If we only had wings like those storm-birds we 
could launch ourselves from the railing and mount up 
higher, always higher, among the clouds,” laughed the 
girl. 

“ Try your wings, maiden,” retorted the young man, 
gaily. “ If you will lead the way, I promise to follow 
to the ends of the earth.” 

The girl bit her lip and looked at him. Two days 
earlier Mr. Albert Rainer had employed much the same 
language on board his yacht. It was very pleasant, 
but sufficiently surprising. 

Mind your footing, young people,” admonished 
Everhard, peering out of the door. ‘‘ The wind is fitful 
and strong.” 


174 


ONCE AND FOREVER 


175 


“We are all right,” said the officer. “ There goes 
the yacht of the rich beggar out to sea.” 

“ He has named it for me, or rather for the flower I 
personated,” said Bertha. 

“ It would have been rather decent of him to have 
invited me to the christening,” he added in an injured 
tone. “ Now we must study the whole panorama of 
the islands, you know. Kirby is out here somewhere 
on duty with the men, grubbing among the sand-hills. 
What a go it would be if he could only see us,” and he 
smiled with secret amusement. 

“Why are you amused .^ ” demanded the frank 
Bertha. “ Would you like Captain Kirby to be up 
here with us.?^ ” 

“ Scarcely.” 

From this point of observation the islands were out- 
spread, like a map, far below them, the three hundred 
and sixty-five of the group forming a semi-circle from 
Ireland in the west, past Somerset, Hamilton and Har- 
rington Sound to St. Georges twenty miles away in the 
eastern extremity. The day imparted a roughness and 
wildness to the scene which would have been melancholy 
to spirits less buoyant than those of the spectators on 
the tower. The moan of the enclosed waters, leaping 
the barriers of sunken ledges and uncovered reefs, 
brought storm messages from mid-ocean and swelled to 
a dirge at times. Heedless youth was undismayed by 
portents. Rapture and excitement, blended with a 
sense of sweet security, caught up the whole being of 
Bertha and glorified her surroundings. She was alone 
with the friend — the lover, perhaps — ^whom she would 
choose in preference to any other, poised on the giddy 
height of tower, protected by the arm of strength from 
danger. Was this the supreme moment of her exist- 


170 


A BERMUDA LILY 


ence to which all future days and years must contribute 
their share of joy, vision, achievement, then fall back 
to the dead level of sequent monotony in the ebbing of 
the sand grains, the creeping of the shadows? 

The girl did not gaze after the yacht, but pointed 
out to her companion the bend of the shore, the fangs 
of the coral reefs, each with some familiar tale of wreck 
and disaster, the masts and funnels of the shipping in 
the harbors. She nestled closely to the side of Henry 
Atherton, unconsciously, and his eyes reverted to her 
face more frequently than to the scene. What did the 
rich yachtsman mean by naming his vessel for her? He 
would teach the cad a lesson, he fumed, with a heat akin 
to jealousy. 

“ You are not listening,” said Bertha, roguishly, and 
she made a step forward to complete the tour of the 
gallery. 

“ I was thinking of my birthday gift,” he replied, 
detaining her. “ You have not given it to me yet.” 

Bertha’s heart began to beat violently, and she grew 
pale with emotion. The next moment his cheek touched 
her own, and their lips met in a long kiss. 

“ Darling ! Do you love me ? ” he whispered, caress- 
ingly. 

“ Yes,” she faltered. 

The wind swept off Bertha’s hat and sent it whirling 
over the brink, the sport of the eddies, until it sank out 
of sight in the gulf below. The elements played pranks 
with her silky tresses, framing her downcast yet happy 
face in an aureole. 

“ What shall I do without a hat ? ” she exclaimed, 
with a little cry of dismay. 

‘‘We can find it again,” said the Lieutenant, with a 


ONCE AND FOREVER 


177 


look of ardent admiration. “ Besides, I like you better 
without it.” 

Everhard and the lighthouse-keeper talked together 
at the door of the tower. The keeper eyed the officer 
dryly, without comment. Everhard smiled at Bertha’s 
confusion over the loss of her headgear and drew her 
hand through his arm. 

“ It is well you did not follow your hat over the para- 
pet,” was his careless comment. 

He spoke with the abstraction which might have been 
suspected by Captain Kirby for the complaisance of a 
parent in lending himself to one of the phases of a deli- 
cate situation. If a similar doubt occurred to Henry 
Atherton, as an eligible young man, he did not permit 
the matter to trouble him. In reality the father per- 
ceived nothing of his daughter’s sentiments for the 
handsome soldier, nor the latter’s preference for linger- 
ing at her side in the ever-increasing intimacy of fre- 
quent intercourse. To Everhard Bertha was not grown 
up. He had no solicitude as to her future. Did he ever 
think of what was to be the probable settlement in life 
of the child God had given him ? The culprit imagined 
his keen glance scrutinized her severely when the door 
was regained after making the turn of the gallery. 

“ The barometer is falling. We shall get our share 
of bad weather after a few days,” he said. 

“ I hope not,” said the officer. 

He deferentially gave his senior precedence as they 
descended the steps of the winding stairway once more 
with the more alacrity that the measure enabled him to 
press Bertha’s hand softly behind the back of her par- 
ent. The hat was not to be found at the base of the 
lighthouse, where the vehicle waited that had conveyed 
them here, at the urgent invitation of Lieutenant Ath- 


178 


A BERMUDA LILY 


erton. Accordingly the lady of the party was stowed 
away in the depths of the rustic carriage, designated by 
the officer as a trap, but more closely resembling the 
“ carryall ” of American country roads, beside her 
father, with the leather curtains down, while Lieutenant 
Atherton took the seat beside the negro boy who served 
as coachman. Thus placed, the young man could turn 
and regard Bertha, with the wind-blown locks, and talk 
with her father. The pair exchanged those glances of 
mutual interrogation, wistfulness and sympathy in the 
natural affinity of their age that stirred the soul of the 
girl to the depths, and moved him strangely. 

Captain Kirby had been on duty with some engi- 
neers among the sand-hills since early morning at a 
military rendezvous arranged by the Governor to test 
a strategic problem of his own. His Excellency had 
partaken of a picnic luncheon with the officers, when 
the rising wind had played such pranks with his dignity 
as necessitated weighting the tablecloth spread on the 
ground with stones at the four corners, blowing away 
the salt and mingling sand with the jellied meats and 
game pies, pepper-wise, all without impairing his equa- 
nimity in the least. Had he not clearly demonstrated 
that in event of the Americans of the neighboring con- 
tinent, furnished with modern implements of war, or 
some unsuspected hordes of aborigines in canoes, armed 
with lances and arrows, land on the Coral Islands, the 
vicinity of the lighthouse could be defended, inch by 
inch, with a mere handful of British soldiers. 

Captain Kirby was returning to camp some hours 
later when a flimsy shape flew through the air far over- 
head, and circled down to the ground at his feet. 

“What is it?” he demanded, poking the rag with 
his sabre, half-contemptuously. 


ONCE AND FOREVER 


179 


“ A woman’s hat, sir,” replied a sergeant, picking 
it up. 

The hat had a battered aspect, as of having caught 
on branches and thorns, been dropped into dusty hol- 
lows and again whirled away by a successive gust. 

“ A woman’s hat flying through the air. Odd ! 
Hang it on that bush and the owner may find it, unless 
she has lost her head as well,” said Captain Kirby. 

A soldier obeyed the order, suspended the hat on a 
twig of a wayside shrub and arranged the ribbons with 
care, to the diversion of the other men. 

At this juncture a modest vehicle trundled into sight 
on the road, and a feminine voice exclaimed : “ My hat ! 
Oh, I am so glad. How could I pass through a town 
without it ! ” 

The highly prized head covering was restored and 
received by the owner with little adjustments of bows 
and bending of frayed straw brim, and afterwards 
secured on the ruffled golden locks with demure satis- 
faction. 

“ Thanks ! ” she added, with a grateful glance at 
Captain Kirby which should have disarmed masculine 
prejudice, but did not in the present instance. 

He bowed stiffly. 

Been on the grind out here all day, old man ? ” in- 
quired Lieutenant Atherton. 

“Yes. And you.?” 

“ Oh, we have been doing the lighthouse. Awfully 
jolly up there. The hat blew off from the balcony, 
don’t you know,” said Henry Atherton, with an expres- 
sion of indolent amusement and defiance at his friend. 

“You are coming to dine at the club.?” demanded 
Captain Kirby. 

“ Yes,” easily. 


180 


A BERMUDA LELY 


Then the Engineers drew back and the carriage 
drove on. 

“ Why does he dislike me.^* ” thought Bertha in per- 
plexity. She was puzzled and disturbed, as we are apt 
to be in this world by a manifestation of hostility on 
the part of a stranger. Man is a cause-hunting ani- 
mal, according to the German proverb. Bertha had 
not yet begun to seek for chilling and disagreeable 
reasons of counter-purposes, yet the skein of experience 
was already within the grasp of her unwilling and inex- 
perienced fingers. 

Lieutenant Atherton indulged in sudden fits of mer- 
riment over the unexpected meeting with his fellow 
officer, as they drove homeward. 

“ I say! What a joke to see Kirby out here, after 
all, and I off on the sly ! ” he said. 

“ You are very much attached to your friend,” 
Bertha suggested, meditatively, as her father was silent. 

“ He’s not a bad sort, although he does get riled 
occasionally,” said the young man, relapsing into 
laughter. 

He did not explain further the cause of his mirth to 
his companions, as the most rudimentary sense of 
courtesy forbade such a course. The true source of 
his own enjoyment of the excursion to the lighthouse, 
apart from emulation of Mr. Rainer’s christening party 
on the yacht, to which he was not invited, consisted of 
the hours thus spent with Bertha partaking of the 
sweetness of forbidden fruit. If he saw the most trivial 
events tinged with rose color it was because a fence 
between makes love more keen. He had met with oppo- 
sition from his strictly honorable friend to the mere 
idle gratification of his own inclinations. The two 
young men had disagreed that morning, when Eurby 


ONCE AND FOREVER 


181 


had made a row, according to Henry Atherton, had 
warned him of possible entanglements with the German 
and his daughter, and asked some sharp questions. The 
Lieutenant was of the opinion that he would have 
pitched any other fellow out of the window for a sim- 
ilar impertinence. With Kirby it was different, of 
course. He was Mabel’s cousin. The youth with the 
Greek nose had knocked under, getting the worst of 
the argument, as he usually did with Kirby, and prom- 
ised to do better in the future. He was fond of Mabel, 
but then, he was becoming very fond of Bertha. Loit- 
ering about the camp, a mischievous impulse moved 
him to play truant in the absence of the stem mentor. 
He hired the trap, drove to the headland, and insisted 
on taking Bertha and her father to the lighthouse. 
Everhard demurred over threatening weather, while 
Bertha needed no second bidding to get her hat. 

The mood of Atherton softened to a tranquil and 
gentle thoughtfulness, as if touched by pervading influ- 
ences. Undoubtedly he estimated both parent and 
child by their humble surroundings. He resembled one 
of those princes who hunt in the Alps and enjoy fre- 
quenting a lower grade of society in the first chalet. 
What if he cast aside all chances of a career and dwelt 
here in peaceful contentment with Bertha? He did not 
formulate the idea of choosing her to go forth with 
him as a Hfe companion, but only to abandon his own 
sphere forever. The young man half turned to Ever- 
hard with the demand to give him Bertha on his lips. 

Everhard looked at his watch. 

“ We must not detain you if you intend to dine at 
your club,” he said. 

Henry Atherton experienced a vague sentiment of 
relief in escape. The next time would do as well. 


CHAPTER XVII 


HOW CAPTAIN COX TOOK SHIP 

On that memorable day Captain Cox yawned com- 
fortably and unrestrainedly, stretching his arms above 
his head, shutting his eyes and opening his capacious 
mouth to the utmost limit. He had just arisen and 
was taking a turn in his bit of a garden before break- 
fast. His matitudinal toilette was in keeping with his 
surroundings, consisting of a white waistcoat, a loose 
jacket, a pair of faded nankeen trousers and leather 
slippers, into which he had thrust his bare feet. 

The Captain’s home was a cottage in the environs 
of Hamilton. A cove in the rear gave access to the 
water. The usual papaw trees grew near the kitchen 
door. The virtues of the friendly arborescent were ap- 
preciated by the Chinese cook, who wrapped fresh 
meat in the leaves to render it tender, by means of a 
pancreatic action, and again made the favorite sauces 
of the fruit. Tempted by the example of neighbors, 
the sailor had essayed farming to the extent of planting 
little patches of vegetables in clearings, protected by 
trees, for the American market of early spring, but his 
onions and tomatoes had been blown away in a hurri- 
cane, since which time he had left the negro steward to 
ripen such potatoes as the domestic consumption re- 
quired. Flowers bloomed all about him in unkempt 
luxuriance, offspring of seeds collected in his voyages. 
A certain characteristic disorder pervaded the floral 
ranks. The purple bougainvillea climbed along a wall 
183 


HOW CAPTAIN COX TOOK SHIP 183 


above a tangled wealth of hibiscus, and tendrils of 
stephanotis, mespilus and Lisbon lemon trees, while an 
amaryllis from Madeira, once accorded hospitality as a 
modest bulb, had seen fit to extend in vigorous masses 
of stalks and clumps of pink blossoms on all sides. 
One would say the flowers loved to take root and abide 
in the Captain’s garden, sure of benevolent tolerance 
of their need of a good soil, well watered, just as his 
nieces and the boy Pedro were fond of seeking his roof. 

He went indoors and partook of his favorite break- 
fast, which consisted of salted codfish, with olive oil 
and vinegar, buttered toast and a mug of coffee. 

The mind of the worthy mariner was as much at 
ease as circumstances admitted. His bark, the Prin- 
cess Royal, was to sail at noon for New York, and he 
intended, later, to stroll down to the harbor and watch 
the vessel off, as a final ceremony. The day of the 
week was Friday, but he had long ago surmounted any 
superstition concerning dates of departure. It is not 
granted to everyone to model his own dwelling to his 
personal requirements, after the fashion of a mollusk, 
with its shell, as the Captain had done, christening his 
home ashore The Port. He was wont to speak of 
himself as well on in years, although his hair was no 
more than turned iron-grey, and to compare his own 
body to craft returned from the Arctic, Antarctic and 
Pacific seas, battered and covered with barnacles. This 
play of facetious humor at his own expense was more 
fitting when indulged in by himself than when insinu- 
ated by comrades as gouty and beyond active service. 
The satisfaction of a sailor in fashioning his own ship 
was enjoyed by Captain Cox. The Princess Royal was 
Bermuda built and rigged, sailed by a Bermuda cap- 
tain and mate and with a crew recruited as far as pos- 


184 ? 


A BERMUDA LILY 


sible from the native ranks of the islands. In emula- 
tion of Sir George Somers, when the early visitor laid 
the keel of his boat of eighty tons burden, in the month 
of August, and began to caulk it in February with 
oakum obtained from old cables and the contents of the 
barrels of tar and pitch kept from the stores, breaming 
her over with lime made of whelk shells and a hard white 
stone burned in a kiln, slaked with water and tempered 
with tortoise oil. Captain Cox had built his vessel of 
Bermuda timber. Boasting of a size of two hundred 
tons burden, seventy feet of deck, twenty of breadth, 
and a height in the hold under the beams at the main 
hatchway of no less than three feet, the Captain held 
staunchly to the adoption of Bermuda cedar as valu- 
able in boat building, if reputed brittle for carving. 
In the estimation of the maritime world the Princess 
Royal might be a humdrum sort of tub, almost a 
coaster, sailing northward to Newfoundland and Nova 
Scotia in the interests of the fisheries, and again trad- 
ing from port to port of the West Indies and Central 
and South America for tobacco, sugar, brandy, straw 
hats and Paraguay tea (the mate), to the owner it 
was a classical craft, with silken sails, fit to bear the 
richest freight of pearls and gold ore of the mines. 

When the Captain had partaken of his breakfast he 
lighted his pipe and again took a turn in the garden. 
His two nieces, Frances Cox and Bertha Everhard, ap- 
proached the gate. 

“ Ah ! There you are, lassies,” said the genial 
mariner, kissing them in addition to a hearty shake of 
the hand. “ All well at home? What may you be up 
to now? ” 

Bertha was slightly embarrassed at the shrewd in- 
quiry. Frances, very trim and smart in a careful 


HOW CAPTAIN COX TOOK SHIP 185 


toilette, with her supple waist encircled by a belt of 
metal plates, was equal to the occasion. 

“ Matilda sent her best love, uncle. She could not 
come over with us this morning because of the children,” 
said Miss Cox of St. Georges, glibly. “We are always 
delighted to pay you a little visit, if we do not intrude.” 

“ Come in, and let that China boy make you a cup 
of chocolate.” 

They complied with alacrity, while he retired to his 
own chamber to make those modifications in his attire 
deemed indispensable even by him, the most careless of 
men, to receive the fair sex. The garb of Captain Cox 
on this particular morning was of an importance un- 
suspected by either himself or his visitors. He allowed 
the negro steward, Dick, to put on a pair of red silk 
stockings, and to tie neat shoes with black ribbons, 
after which he substituted reasonable habiliments 
of grey tweed for the faded nankeen of slothful ease. 
He rejoined his nieces and opened the gates of his 
kingdom for them with a gallant bearing habitual to 
him on similar occasions. The two girls began to peer 
and prowl about among his treasures with lively fem- 
inine curiosity, for to thus visit the good uncle had 
been a rare delight since childhood. Only that morn- 
ing Fanny had urged it as a duty on Bertha to seek 
the Port together. 

The collection of objects, valuable or of trifling 
worth, gathered the flotsam and jetsam of the tide 
more than the orderly contents of a museum. A quaint, 
highly-colored map of continents and empires and 
fabulous animals hung on the wall. Charts of admir- 
alty soundings, currents, depths, weighing the ocean, 
analyzing the ooze, cabalistic to the uninitiated, yet 
showing the owner’s familiarity with the equator, fol- 


186 


A BERMUDA LILY 


lowing the longitudes northward and southward, and 
to the magnetic pole, were scattered about with several 
examples of the mariner’s primitive cards. The Cap- 
tain was very wise, in the opinion of young Bertha. He 
was well versed in logarithms, the laws of storms and 
winds, climatology and meteorology to a practical ex- 
tent. Mythical legends of marvel and terror had ceased 
with the remorseless advance of science, yet the girl 
had always been able to weave a magical atmosphere 
out of the sailor’s store brought over the sea. The 
scattered articles were ever changing, for few guests, 
young or old, left the Port empty-handed. 

Frances inspected the place sharply. She lifted a 
rug of ostrich feathers from Chili, a Fuegan mantle of 
skins, and turned over several fine mats plaited in pat- 
terns. She found some tappa cloth of Hawaii, a lei 
necklace of orange-tinted feathers, and tufts of the 
plumage of tropical birds of gorgeous hues. 

“ Dear uncle, may I have these ” she coaxed. “ This 
roll of cream-colored Canton crepe would be so useful.” 

“ Take it, if you like,” replied the Captain with in- 
difference. “You must dine with me at two o’clock. 
I will give Fing Chu orders to make one of his best 
ragouts, with plenty of red peppers. Then if it makes 
your eyes water a bit, you shall have a glass of sweet 
Malmsey wine to cool your tongues.” 

“ Oh, thanks, dear uncle ! ” exclaimed the nieces, with 
the enthusiasm of gratitude which ever furnishes the 
feminine chorus of the sailor kinsman in real life as 
well as on the stage. 

Thereupon Captain Cox began to bustle around and 
make preparations for the day. He was to fully verify 
the warning that it is not in man that walketh to direct 
his steps. First he summoned the Chinese cook and. 


HOW CAPTAIN COX TOOK SHIP 187 


with a twinkle In his eye, ordered him to prepare a more 
abundant noonday meal and not to forget the ragout 
plentifully seasoned with red peppers to suit his nieces. 

The Celestial youth of the copper-colored counte- 
nance stood before him and bowed, as a sprite rises 
through the stage trap of the theater. He smiled that 
flitting smile, capable of every shade of mockery or 
derision, to be detected ever on the face of a Chinese, 
from the highest diplomatist of princely lineage, clad 
in vestments of brocade in a European capital, to the 
humblest vendor of a western market place. Several 
years before. Captain Cox had saved him at sea, cling- 
ing to a hen-coop. Whatever latent ambition to get on 
in the world may have lingered in his Oriental mind, he 
served his protector faithfully. He had speedily and 
mysteriously secured national garments, and invariably 
appeared, as on the present occasion, in a blue upper 
sack, unbleached cotton nether raiment, gathered in at 
the ankles, and thick-soled shoes, with a lustrous pigtail 
braided and hanging down his back. He was reticent 
concerning his past life beyond the statement that he 
had been a scholar of the French Catholic mission of 
his native province in China before taking to the sea. 

The Captain, brooking no denial to hospitality, pro- 
posed leaving his nieces to amuse themselves while he 
went down to the harbor to see the Princess Royal set 
sail for New York with the tide. Bertha acquiesced, 
and forgot all about seeking stuffs for new dresses 
while she lingered over curious baskets, woven by In- 
dian women, sponges, little carved boxes made by the 
natives of Chaco, in which Spanish ladies keep their 
needlework; the king and queen conch shells of the 
Bahama Channel, delicately flushed with rose, warm 
red and brown, suggestive of the finding of pink pearls. 


188 


A BERMUDA LILY 


and once in demand for cameo cutting. As for Frances, 
she turned over several punchos and quilts and discov- 
ered some lengths of minaque lace, which she begged of 
her relative very prettily. She was not a young woman 
to go away empty-handed from such a visit. Foolish 
Bertha dreamed over corals and shells, inhaling the 
subtle fragrance of scented woods. 

Captain Cox unlocked a closet with a small key at- 
tached to his watchchain. A Chinese cabinet stood 
within this space, also fastened securely on the shelves 
of the closet were vases of porcelain, jade and several 
plump little idols in their shrines. 

“ Did the ancestors of Fing Chu actually pray to 
these monsters, uncle ” demanded Bertha. 

“ Very likely, my dear,” rejoined the Captain. 
“ Every man has his own joss in this world. Our friend 
of the yacht Bermuda Lily burns incense before the 
God of Riches, I shouldn’t wonder.” 

‘‘ Uncle, I do believe you are a heathen yourself ! ” 
cried Fanny. 

He chuckled as he sought a case, and held it up un- 
opened in a tantalizing way. 

“ This is a Japanese game of perfumes, now rare, 
and the girl who gets married first shall have it for a 
wedding gift,” he said. 

Frances Cox bridled slightly and compressed her 
lips with an expression of resolution. Young Bertha 
flushed to the tint of the queen conch shell on the shelf, 
and hung her head. 

‘‘ I am sure it will be Fanny,” she murmured in con- 
fusion. 

“ Well, Fanny has the start in years,” assented the 
Captain, restoring the box to the shelf and again lock- 
ing the door. 


HOW CAPTAIN COX TOOK SHIP 189 


He was called away by Dick, the steward. 

“We need not stay longer this morning,” Fanny 
whispered. “ There is really nothing more to detain 
us.” 

“ But there is uncle’s dinner, you know,” Bertha de- 
murred, rearranging the shells and baskets lingeringly. 

“ Bother ! Somebody else may eat the ragout,” pro- 
claimed Frances, with a prophetic wisdom. 

Captain Cox stood at the gate with a sailor, while 
Dick hovered near and Fing Chu peered out of the 
kitchen door to listen as well. He nodded a curt and 
abstracted farewell to the apologies and departure of 
his nieces. Was he not like the patriarch Job, receiv- 
ing messengers of evil from the four winds The new 
propeller had arrived four days earlier than the mas- 
ters of the sailing craft had reckoned upon, and was 
already alongside the wharf, with nimble myrmidons 
bringing ashore the cargo. The young Captain of the 
Princess Royal asked leave because of serious illness in 
his family. In addition to these vexations the crew 
murmured at sailing on Friday. 

Captain Cox heard these tidings with a glistening 
eye, empurpled visage and clenched fists. He launched 
such a volley of nautical oaths at his companions as 
only a quick temper, hereditary gout and a remarkably 
varied repertoire could have furnished his overburdened 
feelings on the spur of the moment. Friday forsooth! 
Had he not gotten over that nonsense of ill-luck when 
he was a lad.^^ He inveighed against the decline of 
seamen in morals and discipline, as a veteran of the 
first of the nineteenth century. White’s baby was ailing 
with croup or measles and his wife kept him tied to her 
apron-strings instead of allowing a vessel to sail I The 
distressed father would find a substitute in the course 


190 


A BERMUDA LILY 


of the morning if he could not ship with the child dying. 
Would he, now.? Sailors have no right to be hampered 
with women and babies ! He advised Captain White 
to remain ashore and rock the cradle, in very racy 
terms indeed. 

“ Friday’s luck be blowed ! ” shouted the irate ma- 
riner, glowering at the pilot’s boy, who was the latest 
emissary. “ That pirate craft will be slipping out of 
the harbor again before you know it. Dick, you old 
blackguard! Don’t stand there staring like a stuck 
pig ! Fetch me a hat and my pipe I ” 

The Captain hastened along the road, and the stew- 
ard sped after him in shirtsleeves and apron, carrying 
the first hat he could snatch up in the hall and his 
master’s favorite briarwood pipe. 

Savory odors of the ragout in preparation already 
emanated from the detached kitchen. Fing Chu, other- 
wise, Worth Sincere, fulfilled all the requirements of one 
of his class, reputed capable of making a soIttu out of 
a fiannel waistcoat and a stew from a pair of old boots. 
He had obeyed the order to increase the quantity of 
onions and capsicum in the Captain’s favorite dish be- 
yond the usual proportions with the national serious- 
ness embodied in the well-known tale of the dinner 
service cracked like the model plate sent as a pattern. 

When Dick, the steward, scuttled past, Fing Chu 
came to the door, stewpan in hand, questioned his fel- 
low servant, and, deeming his response unsatisfactory, 
sallied forth to the gate in pursuit. Whether the 
Celestial intelligence is prone to curiosity, or other- 
wise, the cook shared the excitement of the household 
over the sailing of the Princess Royal. He paused a 
moment, then thrust the stewpan amidst the shrubbery 


HOW CAPTAIN COX TOOK SHIP 191 


beside the path and glided away along the white road 
after the others, uncoiling the pigtail wound around 
his head for work as he ran. The ragout might sim- 
mer in the stewpan among the bushes for a while, and 
if bird, insect or reptile ventured to taste the fiery 
component parts, paying the penalty of death, such an 
intruder could be skimmed out with a ladle before 
serving, and the diners would be not a whit the wiser. 
Such had ever been the creed of Fing Chu. 

Captain Cox scrambled on board the Princess Royals 
hauled off into mid-stream, with cargo complete, the 
steward scrambled after the master, and Fing Chu 
scrambled after the negro. A man of prompt action 
in emergencies, as well as of hasty temper, the Captain 
fell, like a bomb, in the midst of the haggard and irres- 
olute young Captain White, the fuming pilot, walking 
about with his hands in his pockets, and the mutinous 
crew, reluctant to sail on Friday. It were superfluous 
to repeat either his terms of comment or command. He 
sent Captain White ashore with a parting word which 
could not be interpreted as a benediction. He swore 
roundly at the sulky crew, first threatening to shoot 
them on the spot, or, at least, put them in irons, then 
ordered them over the ship’s side, as he could pick up 
a better lot of Bermudians than they were in half an 
hour, on the Hamilton quay. Such prompt measures, 
coupled with the worthy mariner’s jibes and sarcasms, 
brought the sailors around to discipline without delay. 

Thereupon the Princess Royal weighed anchor and 
the pilot took command to thread the dangerous chan- 
nels of the reefs. The Captain had leisure to cast a 
last glance of scorn at the rival steamer alongside of 
the wharf. An admiring crowd, ever ready to yield 


19 ^ 


A BERMUDA LILY 


to progress, considered the propeller of a most trim 
aspect. Then, as the Princess Royal wended her way 
close to the shore to gain the open reaches beyond, the 
master descried a vehicle on the highway. This equip- 
age would be recognized as the gig of a country doctor 
in any portion of the world. The Captain placed his 
hands over his mouth, trumpet-wise, and hailed the 
occupant. Doctor Russell gazed forth from the hood. 

“ Hello ! Fm off for the States. Shall I fetch you 
a Christmas turkey from the New York market.?” 
bawled the Captain, jocosely. 

“ Yes ; and promise to share it,” shouted the Doctor. 

“ If you will carve me a side-bone and a second 
joint,” said the Captain. 

He hastily consulted his humble servitors on board. 

“ Here, you! Was the house left open.? ” 

The steward’s woolly head popped up above the com- 
panionway. 

“ Yes, sah,” was the bland response of one who dwelt 
in a patriarchal community on shore. “ Somebody will 
surely close de door for storms when de neighbors know 
we’se gone.” 

“ Here, you, Fing Chu I Did you happen to take the 
key.? ” 

The head of the Chinaman, with the pigtail once 
more coiled about it, protruded from the kitchen gal- 
ley, where he had been bidden by the Captain in relent- 
ing mood to prepare a dinner of something more than 
pea soup and biscuit or salted beef and potatoes for 
the delinquent, and now penitent, crew. 

“ Forgot it, sir,” he retorted, grinning and bobbing 
out of sight. 


HOW CAPTAIN COX TOOK SHIP 193 


The Captain hailed his brother-in-law as the vessel 
moved slowly on. 

“ Just lock up the Port on your way home.” 

“ All right,” the little Doctor piped back. “ God 
bless you, Thomas.” 

“ God bless you, David.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


CHRISTMAS 

The Coral Islands celebrated Christmas with roses 
instead of holly, mistletoe and evergreen, even as the 
natives of Ceylon and India decorate the houses of 
Europeans with tropical blooms rich in color and scent. 
Bermuda prepared for the festival as usual, all grades 
of social life adhering to the usages which unite the 
Anglo-Saxon race around the world. 

Cheerful activity pervaded Palmetto Lodge. The 
Cox family met here to partake of the Christmas 
turkey and plum-pudding in that gathering of kindred 
which was so highly prized by the old couple. Captain 
Cox had not returned on the overdue bark, probably 
owing to adverse winds. Mrs. Hooper had slighted 
the domestic feast for many years in favor of Euro- 
pean cities. 

“ I do hope Thomas will make port before dinner 
time,” said Aunt Ellen, gazing out of the window with 
a sigh. ‘‘ Do you think we might delay an hour ” 

“ No,” replied the Doctor, decisively. “ It makes 
men a bit crusty to wait for their Christmas dinner 
when they are sharp set. We have no right to give 
Samuel a nervous headache by keeping him fasting. 
If Tom is not to eat that side-bone of turkey with us 
to-day it is fate. I could have bought you half a 
dozen fine fowls in the market, you know.” 

Aunt Ellen shook her head. She would have no 
Christmas turkey other than that fetched by her 
194 


CHRISTMAS 


195 


brother on board the Princess Royal. His feehngs 
might be hurt. The native vessel, also considered as a 
sentient being, would be aggrieved if a rival had out- 
stripped her on the homeward run. The old lady was 
inflexible on this point. Her guests would dine without 
a turkey unless the ship arrived in due season. Sou- 
venirs of past Christmas gatherings crowded upon her 
memory, her own childhood and maiden state forming 
the consecutive links in the chain of events. Then she 
wondered how her brilliant and erratic sister, Mrs. 
Hooper, would spend the day in foreign lands, even 
more than she concerned herself for the safety of her 
brother, the Captain. Correspondence would inevitably 
result, for Mrs. Hooper was a diffusive letter-writer to 
her relatives, if she preferred to live apart from them. 

Martha thrust her turban in the door of the dining 
room, where Mrs. Russell had paused near the case- 
ment, drawing on her grey gloves before going to 
church. 

“ Ain’t we got no bunch of holly, with berries, to 
hang up for de day, ma’am ? ” the negress inquired, 
and her beady eyes rolled around the walls in an exam- 
ination of the pictures. 

“ Tom promised to bring the holly on his return 
voyage. I do like a branch as a presage of good luck 
for the year,” replied the mistress. 

“ Don’t you worry,” said Martha. “ I can send out 
de young ’uns to find some before dinner. Captain 
Tom chose a Friday for sailing, and maybe he’s payin’ 
for such foolishness by this time with contrary winds.” 

The old couple wended their way along the path to 
the parish church, in response to the tinkle of the bell. 

Bertha had opened her eyes blithely on Christmas 
morning. She had received no message or gift of any 


196 


A BERMUDA LILY 


sort from the soldiers’ camp at Painter’s Vale. Did 
she expect it.?* The days had become fraught with 
pleasurable, if vague, anticipations in the new influ- 
ences of her life. She was to sing an anthem, selected 
by the clergyman, in the parish church. The girl 
could not imagine what existence would be without 
Bermuda roses, velvety crimson, yellow and white at 
the Christmas season. She gathered them at hazard, 
and almost from force of habit, decorating the mem- 
bers of the household, from her father to Eric, attach- 
ing one to her own breast and another to her hair under 
the brim of her hat. She wondered shyly if Henry 
Atherton would stroll into the sanctuary, as he had 
done on a previous occasion. He might come, if only to 
admire the long garlands of roses fastened across the 
altar railings, the pink sprays swaying from every 
available ledge and cornice, the masses of red in the 
embrasures of the windows, glorifying with tender 
tendril and redolent clusters the faded hangings and 
bare white walls. Bertha slyly attached the nosegay 
she carried in her hand to the door of the family pew, 
before seeking her place in the choir, an act accepted 
by the Doctor as a delicate attention to himself. In 
reality the gay signal was intended to guide a stranger 
to a convenient seat. The parish church sang its 
carols and fulfilled all the usual duties of the anniver- 
sary, but no handsome officer appeared with a non- 
chalant bearing and clanking military accoutrements. 
The spirit of the expectant girl was perturbed by end- 
less conjectures, curiosity and a tinge of disappoint- 
ment. Had accident or any misfortune befallen the 
Lieutenant.? She would be the last person to know it, 
perhaps. Her father’s unconcern checked all confi- 
dences. The young man was not waiting in the church 


CHRISTMAS 


197 


porch, where the negroes gathered, each with a full- 
blown rose in his buttonhole. 

Aunt Ellen drew the hand of her niece through her 
arm as they walked back to Palmetto Lodge. 

“ I sent the young officer an invitation to dine with 
us,” she said with a smile of sympathetic intelligence. 

“ Oh, how good of you, aunty,” cried Bertha in 
grateful accents. 

“ He had a previous engagement at the Admiralty. 
He wrote me a nice little note of excuse.” 

Bertha’s bright face clouded perceptibly. 

“ He may be shy — in a new situation in life,” pur- 
sued Aunt Ellen, mildly. “ Young men dread the chaff 
of their comrades, as lovers, you know.” 

Bertha pressed the hand within her arm in silence. 

Martha kept up old-fashioned customs under a skill- 
ful and genial supervision of pots boiling and spits 
turning on a glowing hearth. Guests of Aunt Ellen 
might reasonably expect to be regaled with modern 
substitutes of capons, stewed with prunes, raisins and 
almonds pounded in milk, colored with saffron, sandal- 
wood, galangale, cloves or mustard; boar’s head and 
a gammon of bacon ; sallets of herbs, and every variety 
of pudding from suet to whitepots. An atmosphere of 
homely contentment prevailed in the house, marked by 
this ripple of unusual movement which was not lacking 
in the dignity of maintaining the standard of hospi- 
tality of the forefathers. 

The arrival of the Samuel Cox family infused fresh 
animation. Samuel Cox had the bland expression of a 
family man fulfilling a pious duty. He was less ab- 
stracted in manner than usual, as if he had resolutely 
put aside the affairs of the shop and St. Georges. He 
bestowed presents on the household of his sister, chiefly 


198 


A BERMUDA LILY 


selected from the stock, and consulted his watch while 
discussing the policy of the Governor, with an interest 
in the lapse of time tending to confirm the prophecy 
of the host that it would be unkind to an empty stom- 
ach to await the arrival of the good ship Princess Royal 
in port. Mrs. Cox greeted Aunt Ellen with her cus- 
tomary cordial manner. She was prepared to take 
everything easily, as it came. She was further dis- 
posed to bask in the agreeable situation of dining out 
instead of entertaining at home. Mr. Smith, wearing 
a white waistcoat, which made him resemble a plump 
little bird, was also in a cheerful humor. The children 
displayed all the elation and excitement of their tender 
age. They would have run away and hidden in am- 
buscade, under the erratic and unreliable guardianship 
of Pedro, had not keen appetites, whetted by anticipa- 
tion, kept them near the dining room door, with an eye 
on Aunt Ellen. As it was, the eldest boy, with the aid 
of maternal promptings, recited a verse in honor of 
Palmetto Lodge, in a high and droning voice. Ever- 
hard came at the appointed hour, in his shabby coat. 
Bertha detected a perfunct weariness beneath the sur- 
face amiability of his bearing. 

“ I have hung up no mistletoe, girls, for we are with- 
out cavaliers,” said Aunt Ellen as the family party 
seated themselves at table. 

“We have not even poor Uncle Tom for a beau,” 
admitted Fanny. 

She carried oflT the palm of toilette on Christmas 
Day. Who so skillful as Frances of the agile form 
and tightly laced corsage, in the sewing on of beads, 
jet or cord of gold and silver in effective patterns, 
after the models of journals of fashion? 

“ Aunt Ellen invited Lieutenant Atherton, but he 


CHRISTMAS 


199 


had another engagement,” said Bertha to her father, 
lapsing into German. 

He frowned. 

“ Here.? ” he said in surprise. 

He recovered composure immediately, but his daugh- 
ter heard him murmur in his beard : “ Most unsuitable ! 
A well-meaning woman enough, however.” 

Thus was Aunt Ellen, in her best lace cap, decked 
with pink bows, beaming with the smiles of a benevolent 
hostess, designated as a well-meaning woman. Bertha 
did not resent the criticism, nor was she personally 
aggrieved by the manifest fact that her father did not 
interpret the invitation to the officer as having been 
given on her account. She was learning her lesson of 
life, and among the enigmas was her own parent. He 
was so different from the rest of the guests present. 
She observed him, unobtrusively, with the tender solici- 
tude inherited from her dead mother, noting the deli- 
cacy of his choice of the viands placed before him ; the 
trifling with one dish, the sparing use of the Doctor’s 
wines, in contrast with the solid feeding of Mr. Smith 
of the white waistcoat, and port and sherry quaffing of 
Samuel Cox. She bent towards him and whispered : 

“ Papa, I think you must be a gentleman.” 

He gave her a swift, amused glance and slightly 
shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Noblesse oblige. Always remember that, my 
daughter,” he said in the same rapid undertone. 

When the host had said grace Aunt Ellen explained 
that Captain Cox was to have brought the turkey and 
other delicacies of the Christmas banquet from the New 
York market on board his own vessel, the Princess 
Royal, and therefore she hoped his relatives shared her 


A BERMUDA LILY 


WO 

own sentiments of loyalty to him in misfortune of sub- 
stituting no others. 

“ Tom chooses the best fowls himself from reliable 
poulterers, and it would have been especially hard on 
him to have bought the stock of the new steamer,” 
said the hostess. 

“ Of course,” assented the other matron, tasting the 
giblet soup, which should have revealed the secret of 
the kitchen, with unimpaired cheerfulness. 

“ You are quite right,” said Samuel Cox. “ We 
can manage without a turkey, I am sure. We owe it 
to Thomas.” 

“No turkey! ” exclaimed the eldest Smith boy with 
a lengthening visage. 

The elders laughed. The little Smiths stood on the 
round of the ladder by means of which the second gen- 
eration had climbed to maturity in the annual visit to 
Palmetto Lodge. Aunt Ellen was ever a comfortable 
sort of person with “ goodies ” to dispense. The chil- 
dren had come to table with many anticipatory skips, 
and were, by common consent, perched on either side 
of the Doctor, with napkins tucked under their chins. 
In their estimation, at least, the Christmas dinner 
proved a glorious feast. 

At an auspicious moment Martha appeared, bearing 
a platter whereon were enthroned two plump geese, 
roasted to a turn. The truth was revealed with much 
innocent merriment. Mistress and maid had set apart 
some fine geese, with prudent forethought, in event of 
a dearth of turkeys. Martha had fed the victims 
neither on white figs, as in the days of Lucullus, nor 
crammed them with balls of dough, captives in dark 
cellars, after the method of the French goose farmers 
of the J ura and the Loire, with reference to an enlarged 


CHRISTMAS 


201 


liver and ultimate serving with truffles, but had treated 
them honestly in sunshine and open air, nourished 
on stubble, rye and bran, with a later regime of boiled 
potatoes and barley, until ready for the sacrifice. 

“ The taste may be plebian, but I do relish goose 
at Christmas and Michaelmas,” said Mr. Smith with 
real or simulated approval, rubbing plump hands to- 
gether and watching Doctor RusseU dissect the first 
crisp joint. 

“ On St. Michael’s Day the true Parisian does not 
fail to partake of oysters with his dejeuner and roast 
goose for his dinner,” Everhard remarked, helping 
himself to a sauce commended by the host as his own 
Anglo-Saxon compromise with the salad realm. 

Sir John Falstaff may have tasted the same portion 
when he dined with Justice Shallow of button onions, 
gherkins, boiled eggs, anchovies and aromatic herbs. 

“ Have you eaten goose at Paris, papa.? ” demanded 
Bertha. 

“ Many times, in my student days,” he rejoined, 
slowly. 

“ How much you have traveled,” the girl mused. 

“ Yes. I have gone about the world considerably in 
my day. I am a sort of Wandering Jew,” he said. 
‘‘ The ancient German voyager of the time of Elizabeth 
affirmed that everyone should travel, as those who stay 
at home, like snails, will remain inhuman, insolent and 
superb.” 

The Doctor carved with old-fashioned courtesy, ask- 
ing the smallest child his preferences. The carver’s 
craft was still a point of etiquette with him, as with 
his forefathers, when head, foot and side dishes graced 
the amply spread board, awaiting bold attack on 
haunch and saddle, an orthodox dismemberment of 


A BERMUDA LILY 


fowls, a graceful slicing of leg of mutton and diaphon- 
ous York ham. The day was past when pheasants 
drenched in ambergris, or peacock with gilded beak 
and spread tail, exacted a skillful manipulation, but 
Doctor Russell still held to the ceremonious formula: 
“ Pray, what shall I have the pleasure of helping 
you to ? ” 

The youthful guests found Aunt Ellen’s Christmas 
dinner, without a turkey, something more than “ a bit 
of fish and a joint,” especially when Martha again ap- 
peared with a plum-pudding like a cannon ball, sur- 
rounded by flames of brandy. Delicious flavors and 
odors lingered long in the juvenile mind. 

The Doctor arose to his feet with his wine-glass in 
his hand and made his customary little speech. Ever- 
hard responded gaily: 

“ Continued prosperity to the Doctor ! May he live 
as long as did Tithonos, son of Laomedon, who dried 
up to a grasshopper, according to the poets.” 

“ The same to you,” said the host, replenishing his 
glass. 

Everhard shook his head and left the wine untasted. 

“No old age and decrepitude for me more than for 
Goethe, by preference,” he said. 

When the cloth was removed and the gentlemen 
gathered around the decanters, lighting their cigars. 
Aunt Ellen led the ladies and children to the drawing- 
room, with the floor of dark, polished wood. Mrs. 
Samuel made inquiries as to the quantity of sugar 
requisite in orange marmalade. Frances paced the 
room, enjoying the rustling sweep of a somewhat flimsy 
silk train, and speedily interested her companions in 
animated descriptions of the Queen’s drawing-room, 
gleaned from the London periodicals that came in her 


CHRISTMAS 


20S 


way. Fanny was coolly of the opinion that a certain 
young duchess must have looked rather nice in iris-blue 
satin, embroidered with silver and with a sable-bordered 
train of darked-hued velvet. She further approved of 
a peach blossom toilette, with reseda and gold tints, 
and draperies of yellow satin, as well as a wondrous 
combination of brocade, creamy tulle and ostrich 
feathers. 

“ If ever I am presented at court I shall wear crepe 
de chine of old rose, with panels of pearl and silk em- 
broidery and a mauve velvet train with sprays of 
roses,” said Fanny. 

“Goodness me!” ejaculated her mother. 

“ A cat may look at a king,” retorted Frances with 
spirit. “ I may be presented at court some day, as a 
loyal Bermudian.” 

“ Surely,” assented Mrs. Cox. 

A momentary silence ensued. Matilda was aston- 
ished and Bertha naively wondering, yet each was will- 
ing to consign Fanny’s chances to the category of 
eternal feminine possibilities in the caprices of fortune 
of the century. 

At this juncture a messenger from Carey Brothers 
brought a case, sent by Mr. Albert Rainer from New 
York, which contained a prayer book for Aunt Ellen, 
a lace shawl for Mrs. Cox, fans mounted in silver and 
tortoise-shell for Matilda and Frances, and the stuff 
for a black silk gown for Martha. A large box was 
addressed to Everhard. The boards were stripped off 
and a picture, richly framed, disclosed. Everhard 
uttered an exclamation of surprise. 

“ The Angel of the Annunciation, with the Lily, of 
Carlo Dolce I ” 


204 


A BERMUDA LILY 


There was a murmur of admiration as he placed the 
picture against the wall for general inspection. 

“Why was it sent to me?” questioned Everhard, 
glancing at his daughter. “ You do not resemble the 
brown-haired, somewhat banal angel. Ah! The celes- 
tial messenger has brought me a lily.” 

“ A Bermuda lily,” said Bertha, laughing. 

Fanny unfurled her new fan and scrutinized her 
young cousin. 

“ You have no gift,” she suggested, maliciously. 

“ The picture is enough,” said Bertha. 

The resources of Palmetto Lodge were not yet ex- 
hausted for the children. Now was the turn of Ever- 
hard to play the part of the most fascinating necro- 
mancer. He prepared the small Christmas tree, set in a 
pot on a block of wood, weighted with lead, surrounded 
by a mimic garden of moss and ferns, and hung with 
colored balls, tapers and gifts. He modeled, out of 
clay, the dogs, sheep and stag — the latter as the first 
animal to bend the knee before the manger cradle of 
the Christ Child, according to the old German legend. 
What tales he had to tell of the pranks of Pelznickel, 
and the fabulous Christkindlein, while Pedro and the 
little Smiths hung on his words. 

When Everhard retired to the guest chamber as- 
signed him that night he paused at the open window 
and detached the faded flower from his coat. 

“ Very sweet, no doubt ; but I prefer the wild eglan- 
tine of Alpine heights, blooming around castle ruins,” 
he soliloquized, shredding the flower down amidst the 
tangle of banana plants and oleanders of the garden, 
as if he thus cast away the record of the years with 
the falling petals. 


CHAPTER XIX 


A SAILOR’S LUCK 

The Russells had held another anniversary of 
Christmas together. The old couple were the wintry 
fruit of mellowing seasons, still sound and fresh in their 
nature, and kept safely by the sheltering leaves of their 
domestic environment. 

While the festival was thus celebrated in a homely 
fashion on shore, a storm-damaged vessel was beating 
up from the South, thwarted by baffling elements, to 
make port. 

When the Princess Royal had set sail on a Friday, 
under command of an irate yet determined owner, she 
had passed the wreck of a schooner drawn within the 
circle of the outer reefs by the wreckers and completely 
capsized, with masts in the water. 

“No luck!” grumbled the man at the wheel, a 
grizzled veteran of undecided nationality. 

“ The first to say that again in my hearing shall 
have the rope’s end ! ” fumed the Captain. “ I’m mas- 
ter here.” 

The wheelsman eyed the first mate, unabashed by 
the threat of authority, and when the skipper had gone 
forward, added: 

“ I’ve followed the sea a matter of forty year, and I 
never knowed any good come of quitting the home port 
on a Friday, mind ye.” 

The mate, a cheerful young sailor, ignored the state- 
ment without further reprimand. 


206 


A BERMUDA LILY 


The Princess Royal proceeded on her way with more 
than her usual deliberation, for the weather was thick, 
with rain and sleet hindering her progress. Her desti- 
nation reached, without incident, the first object ob- 
served by Captain Cox was the steam propeller lying 
alongside of the wharf, ready for sea, at New York, 
as the craft had waited at the quay of Hamilton when 
he sailed. He swore a mighty oath. Now, the worthy 
man was not so blinded by prejudice that he had not 
been keenly aware, for years, of the inevitable advance 
of steam, as infringing on the sphere of the mariner 
of other days, but the enemy had not hitherto come 
across his path in the enterprising spirit of establish- 
ing a line of rapid transit with his native islands. Such 
an innovation would injure the Princess Royal. Inter- 
ference aroused the fibre of selfishness existing, even if 
dormant, in the best of us. The propeller slipped 
away, and vanished. The Captain of the sailing ves- 
sel, red of visage, irascible and domineering to an un- 
bearable degree of tyranny, got on board his cargo 
of Christmas provisions, chiefly, and started after the 
smug rival. He could not be said to have put on all 
steam, but he certainly clapped on all sail, to render 
the home run of the holiday voyage one of unprece- 
dented speed. The bark was urged to rival the swift 
course over the waves of earlier times, the Fruiterers 
of the Azores and the Mediterranean and the American 
clipper, fleeing under royal “ stun-sails ” and jibs, 
alert to court every breeze. The modern fever of risk 
seized Captain Cox in New York harbor. He welcomed 
danger with a calm exterior. Despatch is everything 
nowadays. Better an insurance gained and a vessel 
lost, than tardy delivery. So be it. He, also, would 
make sharp work of it, and take the odds as they came. 


A SAILOR’S LUCK 


207 


Skippers must drive ahead and make time, casting 
earlier sober calculations of possible collision with 
other ships during hours of darkness literally to the 
winds. 

Sir Walter Raleigh said: ‘‘Whosoever commands 
the sea commands the trade, whosoever commands the 
trade of the world commands the riches of the world, 
and consequently the world itself.” 

Thus the Princess Royal started on the homeward 
route with all canvas set. Alas ! The ocean is a fickle 
agent. The weather was fair in the early morning, 
but became overcast at noon, with fresh winds from the 
northeast. Beyond his own nautical experience of a 
falling barometer and probable impending gales on the 
Atlantic coast. Captain Cox received none of those 
cable warnings of to-day as to whether a new tropical 
hurricane north of the Bahamas was traveling north- 
northwest towards Cape Hatteras, or a tempest pre- 
vailed at Cape Race, or that a cyclone, recurving slowly 
from east to north, was advancing on Nova Scotia. 

For two days the wind increased with terrible vio- 
lence and the Princess Royal began to pitch heavily in 
the stormy tumble of heaving waters. The Captain 
obstinately pursued his course, kept his canvas set, 
and courted the rough elements as he had never before 
done in his career, until the trysail split and blew away 
with an explosion like the report of a gun. 

“ A Friday sailin’,” muttered the man at the wheel. 
“ Ay ! The weather looks dirty enough, and the skip- 
per’s gone daft, anyhow.” 

The Princess Royal was blown far out of range of 
the Bermudas by the force of the gale. The storm 
shrieked through the rigging and the vessel groaned and 
creaked in every joint, but Captain Cox proclaimed 


A BERMUDA LILY 


W8 

valiantly that she was timber-framed and not one of 
those iron tubs of new contrivance, ready to start a 
butt, and get “ holed ” in such an ordeal. 

On Christmas Day there were no cheerful prepara- 
tions for a mid-ocean holiday in the matter of freshly- 
scrubbed decks, extra grog for Jack, and the cook the 
most important person on board, as serving dinner. 
The gale diminished in fury, with the bark driven be- 
fore the blast hundreds of miles off her route. A sea 
surged up from the seething main, like a wall of green 
waters, and struck the craft, smashing the bulwarks 
and sweeping away the boats, the cattle, the coops of 
fowls, and injuring the steering gear. Had the next 
billow rolled over her bows, smothering her in foam 
and tearing open the deck, she must have foundered; 
but the fiends of fear swerved aside and passed under 
the frail cockleshell instead. Men breathed once more, 
and thanked God for deliverance in their hearts, if not 
with rigidly set lips. All worked for their lives. The 
cargo had shifted, the vessel leaked, the pumps choked. 
Captain Cox slept, fully dressed, on a locker. The 
crew applied themselves to keeping afloat, undismayed 
by taking in water faster than it could be expelled. 
The case was a disabled, well-nigh water-logged bark, 
with a temporary gear rigged. Worth Sincere, un- 
mindful of his pigtail and the galley fire, lent a hand 
manfully, if dolefully, when his turn came. Creeping 
along timidly northward once more, the Princess Royal 
reached port on the last day of the year, rent and tat- 
tered in sail and cordage, crippled and battered in 
frame, in a most humiliating plight. 

The first object noticed by Captain Cox was the 
propeller lying alongside of the Hamilton wharf. The 
steamer, with the methodical precision of a shuttle. 


A SAILOR’S LUCK 


209 


shot across the web of commercial activity, had made 
another voyage. No romance of sentiment was lav- 
ished on the prosaic little craft that had sturdily 
ploughed a passage through the billows to a destina- 
tion, while the Princess Royal had been thrown about 
like a plaything. Captain Cox was forced to drink the 
cup of bitterness, in complete defeat, to the dregs. 
Not only was his Christmas cargo overdue, but dam- 
aged, and sold at public auction. He was the object 
of untimely and ungrateful chaff by facile worshippers 
of new gods. He returned to his house at a slower 
pace than he had departed, followed by the cook and 
the steward. Mrs. Russell and Martha had opened, 
swept and garnished the premises. The Captain put 
on the old coat, thrust his feet into the leather slippers, 
and seated himself in a cane chair under the papaw 
trees. Aunt Ellen smiled when informed that the 
Chinaman had striven, in vain, to rescue her turkey, by 
the leg, as it was washed overboard. The fowl had 
gone to serve Neptune’s mid-winter banquet in the 
shadowy depths of the ocean, unless it was snapped up 
enroute by some of the shark people. 

“My poor lass! You’ve been a bit hard used,” 
soliloquized the mariner, as he lighted his pipe. 

The Princess Royal, cherished by sailors, even in mis- 
haps and narrow escapes, as a commonplace steamship 
will never be, had started trim and taut, with yards 
squared and rigging well set up. She had returned, 
showing very raggedly an all but wave-swept hulk, 
shorn of spars, sadly in need of a drydock and clean 
sheathing. She was not esteemed by nautical supersti- 
tion an unlucky ship, with such a record as capsizing 
when leaving the ways, grounding on rocks and sandy 
bottoms in a subsequent career. No crow or raven of 


210 


A BERMUDA LILY 


ill-omen had ever perched on her masts. Did the Cap- 
tain reproach himself that the sorry plight to which 
the mistress of his heart had been reduced was owing 
to a Friday sailing from home? Who knows? Seated 
under the papaw trees with his pipe, he may have re- 
alized that he belonged to a vanishing type of the 
quaint usages and habits of forecastle and quarter- 
deck in the changes incident to a mariner’s career. 
The truth was a harsh one. He felt old. 

Worth Sincere sought among the bushes for a miss- 
ing culinary utensil in which he had prepared a fiery 
ragout on the eve of sailing, and found it not. He 
smiled that Mongolian smile of his, for the first time 
in many days. The physiognomist who has observed 
such expansion of the human countenance will not be 
likely to forget it. 


CHAPTER XX 


NEWS 

Me. Albert Rainer arose late of a morning. He 
had earned the right to an epicurean, bachelor exist- 
ence by much early activity in his youth. When the 
Princess Royal had crept into port at Bermuda after 
her stormy voyage, and the new year had dawned, 
Mr. Rainer awoke in his house on Fifth Avenue in 
the city of New York. He strolled downstairs to a 
small breakfast room, in dressing gown and slippers. 
Half a dozen applicants already clamored at the tele- 
phone, a pile of letters awaited perusal at his elbow, 
on a small table. He did not permit himself to be dis- 
turbed. He had attained that summit of power when 
he could say to his myrmidons : “ Tell them to wait.” 

A messenger brought him a jewel-case. 

To be sure ! I forgot all about it,” he said aloud. 

He opened the case and looked at a string of pearls 
of milky lustre. 

‘‘ They might be of a larger size and more perfect 
in shape, but they will do. You may leave them.” 

He toyed with the strand, passing them through his 
plump fingers musingly. The gift was intended for a 
maiden on a distant island, who lacked them for the 
quaint satin robe in which she resembled a stately 
flower. Her father said that her grandmother would 
have worn pearls at a ball. He had reserved the orna- 
ment, in sending Christmas gifts to all members of her 
family, that his preference for her should be marked 
211 


212 


A BERMUDA LELY 


in a delicate manner. How delighted she would be ! 
Lives there a woman, young or old, who is not moved 
to enthusiasm by a pearl mesh? 

Little did Mr. Albert Rainer realize, at that hour, 
the part this chain was to have in his own destiny! 
In the swift and dazzling flash of a flrst impression, 
such as sometimes takes a man unawares, the girl had 
embodied Spring, even Hygeia, fresh and young, who 
wears a wreath and carries the drinking-cup in her 
hand. Her features and the coloring of cheek and 
brow reminded him of the heads cut on certain polished 
gems, with a warm tone shining through, and deflning 
the salient lines of nose and upper lip. This charming 
image rose before his imagination as he lighted a cig- 
arette. His house, bought of a bankrupt merchant, 
and already assuming the proportions of “ a show 
place,” with picture gallery, a Louis Quatorze salon, 
a Henri Quatre dining room, and a Fran9ois Premier 
boudoir, looked strangely empty and lonely this morn- 
ing. It needed a mistress. The entertainments given 
to win popularity at his country seat, also acquired of 
a widow, at a sacrifice, were dull without a smiling 
hostess. He beheld Bertha presiding over lawn and 
terrace, and Chinese pavilions stored with Tozan ware, 
imperial fish bowls, pink and yellow terra-cotta rice 
basins, wine cups of transparent white porcelain, jade 
plaques, bronze geese, as well as a vase on a bracket 
with Chinese signs belonging to the House of Humanity 
and Concord, and a jug with the word “ happiness ” 
repeated five times on the rim. 

Mr. Rainer glanced over a morning paper, accord- 
ing to his habit. The first item that attracted his 
attention was a railway accident in a tunnel of the 
Riviera, between Nice and Monaco. A freight train 


NEWS 


had blocked a passenger train, with such disastrous 
result as the crushing together of the carriages of the 
latter, bruising and wounding humanity. A lady pas- 
senger was forced through the wall of one compartment 
into the next. Death was immediate. The name of the 
unfortunate woman was Mrs. Hooper, and she was a 
native of the Bermuda Islands. 

Mr. Rainer read the paragraph attentively. “ I 
knew Mrs. Hooper,” he soliloquized. ‘‘ Funny old lady 
who consulted me about stocks once at Lucerne. Bless 
my soul! I was a witness of her will in London. She 
must have been the owner of Rose Hill, and pretty 
Bertha’s aunt.” 

A man of keen intelligence and varied experience, 
Mr. Rainer weighed the deceased lady at a glanct . 
The vital spark of life had been quenched by the colli- 
sion of two trains in a tunnel. How characteristic was 
such an end to her restless existence! The domestic, 
untraveled element of society might reason that had 
Mrs. Hooper been contented to remain at home, as be- 
came one of her years, she might have died in her bed, 
like a Christian. Strong men have died of laughter 
and of joy. Anacreon was even choked with a raisin, 
Tarquinius Priscus with a fish-bone, while Pope Adrian 
IV was suffocated by a fly. Why should not Mrs. 
Hooper of Rose Hill, perpetually on the wing, have 
perished in a tunnel? 

That arrow of news sped far over the sea. Twilight 
shrouded Palmetto Lodge. In the garden Martha 
whispered to Mr. Samuel Cox and his daughters about 
the omens and portents of these days. 

“ I’ve had feelin’s and dreams myself, and the missus 
has been low in her spirits,” said Martha, shaking her 
head. “ I’m not one to be talkin’ about duppies. I see 


214 


A BERMUDA LILY 


her, though, out here as plain as could be, a walkin’ 
’round and a pickin’ de flowers, like she was a young 
gal agin. For sho’ I did ! She drawed me to the win- 
dow in de night to look at her, and there she was home 
again.” 

“Lordy!” ejaculated Samuel Cox. 

In the house Aunt Ellen sat in her arm-chair, with 
her face hidden in her hands, while Doctor Russell and 
Everhard bent over her. 

“Oh! We were children together!” she exclaimed, 
in the quavering accents of age. 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE SIGNING OF A WILL 

The yacht Bermuda Lily once more dropped anchor 
in the harbor of St. Georges. The King of Finance 
came in private form, without guests, save an artist or 
two and a clerk with a weak chest. No bunting and 
awnings adorned the craft. He just looked in on his 
friends for a few days, as he assured everyone. Natur- 
ally the islands were much flattered by the sentiment of 
patriotism. The voyage of the fairy craft was a quest 
of romance on the part of a mature suitor. 

Scarcely had he landed when he became involved in 
the interests of a family comparatively strangers to 
him, because of his having been a witness of the testa- 
ment of a kinswoman in Europe. Need it be said that 
Mr. Rainer lent himself to the situation with a genial 
sympathy foreign to his usual demeanor? Carey 
Brothers, as executors, discussed the matter with him, 
confidentially, after dinner. The will was concise and 
very brief, as if Mrs. Hooper swept aside all previous 
legacies, even those trifling gifts of jewelry and laces, 
which might have proved gratifying to a recipient. 
Her niece, Bertha Everhard, was to inherit the prop- 
erty she died possessed of, including Rose Hill. The 
indignation of an older generation might be deemed 
legitimate, if extended to the extreme of contesting the 
testament. Captain Cox had been undecided, while 
Mrs. Russell had firmly refused to take legal measures. 
In the natural course of events her portion would have 
215 


216 


A BERMUDA LILY 


descended to Bertha, the Russells being without surviv- 
ing children of their own, but the omission was 
wounding. 

“ Mrs. Hooper claimed the service of me in London,” 
said Mr. Rainer, thoughtfully. “ Wills are always 
occasioning trouble and contention. The Roman is 
responsible for drawing up the first legal testament, 
whereby a man disposes of his earthly goods, according 
to the records of ancient law. Bless the early Roman! 
He was up-to-date in everything.” 

As for the family, he was amused to find that he was 
regarded with anger and suspicion. What right had 
he to sign such a will.? Distrust of him, for the part 
he had filled, was soon modified by his own affability, 
not to mention the position and prosperity of the 
offender. The male relatives boarded the yacht, and 
accepted an invitation to remain to lunch. 

“ You were much in the confidence of our sister, I 
believe,” said Samuel Cox, pursing up his lips. 

‘‘ Not at all,” replied the witness, smoothly. “ I had 
a very slight acquaintance with her.” 

“ It’s the nasty spirit of that will, mind you ! ” quoth 
the Captain, waving his pipe in the air. “ When a 
man’s always done the square thing by his sister he 
don’t relish the cut direct of his name being left out 
of a testament.” 

“ Correct you are, Thomas,” assented his brother. 

Doctor Russell’s nose seemed to elongate to a sharper 
point. 

“ There’s no use in mincing matters ! ” he said, under 
his breath. “ Rachel Hooper was always a vixen ! ” 

“ Everhard and Bertha are not to blame, of course,” 
added the Captain. 


THE SIGNING OF A WILL 




“ What right has that child to the property ? ” ex- 
claimed Samuel, indignantly. 

‘‘ There’s where the shoe pinches, you see,” said the 
Captain. ‘‘ An extra penny of a legacy from kindred 
never comes amiss to a man, especially when the Prin- 
cess Royal has weathered a gale and needs patching 
up.” 

“ If I had my way, and could persuade you others 
to stand out for justice, I would contest the will to my 
last shilling,” said Samuel in an irritable tone. ‘‘ But 
no ! Ellen has talked you all over to a refusal.” 

Mr. Rainer listened, interrogated and meditated on 
the matter without committing himself in any way. 
Did he notice the absence of Everhard.? He promised 
to visit each of the claimants at their respective homes, 
and dismissed them with a little touch of hauteur in 
his manner. At last he was free to follow his own 
inclinations. He hastened to the headland, where, 
kindled by the torch of imagination, the modest white 
cottage of Everhard gleamed through the shrubbery 
in the semblance of a marble temple. 

Mr. Rainer drew near, and saw the boy Pedro feign- 
ing to transfix the monkey against the wall by shooting 
arrows from his long Otaheite bow. Bertha hastened 
forward to greet the newcomer. He misinterpreted 
her eagerness in a manner agreeable to his own self-love. 

“ I am glad you have returned to Bermuda, Mr. 
Rainer,” she said, extending her hand. ‘‘ I hoped you 
would come over here.” 

He took her hand and held it, studying her fair 
features. 

“ Are you really glad to see me again ” he inquired, 
with tender meaning. 

How strange that you should have known Aunt 


218 


A BERMUDA LILY 


Hooper, and signed her will,” said Bertha in an awed 
tone, ignoring his question and withdrawing her hand. 
“ Let us walk a little, if you please. I need so much 
to ask your advice. Yes, my father has fallen asleep 
in his chair. We need not disturb him. You have met 
him, I think.? He is not at all like the rest of us,” she 
added, naively. 

Albert Rainer was silent. He was considering far 
more the contour of her cheek and throat than her 
words, and comparing her freshness of tint and har- 
mony of detail with the standard of female beauty in 
art. If Bertha fell far short of perfection, according 
to the estimate of museum or gallery, a glamor of 
preference idealized her attraction in the eyes of her 
new acquaintance. She was a trifle chilled and disap- 
pointed by his silence. 

“ It seems unfair that I should have the property,” 
continued Bertha, earnestly. “I may act independently. 
When I try to make papa understand my wishes he 
only laughs, and bids me suit myself. He does not 
really mean it, perhaps, only he estimates Aunt 
Rachel’s fortune very lightly indeed. If you were in my 
place, would you feel very rich.? ” 

“ Yes,” he rejoined, smiling. “ Rich in youth, health 
and beauty.” 

“ Perhaps you are laughing at me, as well as my 
father,” she demurred. 

“ I assure you I am not,” he hastened to protest. 

Bertha nodded, with the most bewitching air of im- 
parting further secrets. 

“ I wish to divide the inheritance with the others. 
Would that be a good plan.? ” 

The King of Finance saw his opportunity. 

“ My dear Bertha ! ” he exclaimed, seizing both of 


THE SIGNING OF A WILL 


219 


her hands and drawing her towards him. “ Y ou are a 
noble girl! Your sentiment is honorable. Do not be 
rash in this affair of an inheritance, and despoil your- 
self. Hasten slowly. I will aid you in every possible 
way. Do not act without consulting me. You can 
write me a letter and tell me all about everything. 
Will you ? ” 

“ Yes,” assented Bertha with a sigh, drawing back 
slightly. 

She was a newly created maiden, quite at variance 
with her former self, and obeying new impulses of 
action. She was oddly aware of the change herself, 
and felt as if she were acting a part. Her mind was 
in a state of perplexity, trouble and doubt. The 
moment was one for action, and in such a crisis she 
found her own father a broken reed. Fain would she 
seek the new arrival, witness of Aunt Hooper’s wiU, 
and demand assistance of him. Mr. Rainer was benevo- 
lent, wise and elderly. He had no other very distinct 
personality to her just then. 

He drew forth a jewel-case and displayed the string 
of pearls. 

“ I have brought you this gift to wear with your 
pretty white dress of the Bermuda lily,” he said, com- 
placently. “ I omitted to send you any souvenir at 
Christmas in order that I might have the pleasure of 
fastening these pearls around your neck myself.” 

Suiting action to words, he placed the lustrous 
strand on the girl’s throat with gentle insistence and 
secured the clasp. 

“ Perfect I ” he added, stepping back a pace to ad- 
mire the effect. “ Will you accept these pearls, Bertha, 
to make me happy ? ” 

Her nostrils quivered and she compressed her lips. 


2^0 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ Oh, no,” she said. “ I could not accept such a 
present from a stranger. My father would not allow 
it.” 

The girl, reverting to her own preoccupations, did 
not understand that a man of many fine qualities thus 
paid her the homage of such chivalry as his nature was 
capable of, nor would she have valued it had she been 
aware of the awakening interest of the newcomer. 
Memory was a sharp pain to her. She beheld a young 
oflScer, gay and debonair, on the path. How long ago 
it seemed. Feminine caprice of ingratitude unfastened 
the string of pearls and gave them back to him. 

“ I may not take them. You are very good to bring 
them to me. Who knows if I shall ever go to another 
ball? ” 

‘‘ That rests with yourself,” he replied, somewhat 
stiffly. He was baffled, but not beaten. 

Mr. Samuel Cox, prompted by his womenkind, lay 
in wait for the yachtsman and brought him home to 
dinner in the small house at St. Georges. On the whole, 
Mr. Rainer formed a tolerant and favorable opinion 
of the Cox family, as exercising the Christian rites of 
hospitality. The host was loquacious, while the hostess 
cushioned the situation, as it were, when an awkward 
angle intruded, by means of her cheerful vivacity. Mr. 
Smith was eager to impart information about the 
colonial revenues, and Matilda, as a pretty, plump 
woman, had an amiable smile. Frances wore a cluster 
of yellow roses on her breast, with her black robe, and 
in her hair attached to a high comb, which gave her a 
piquant and Spanish air. She made the guest converse, 
by means of adroit questions and ready responses. 
The children were on their good behavior and hopeful 


THE SIGNING OF A WILL 


221 


of more gifts from the bland gentleman who came in 
his own boat. 

When the visitor had gone away, Matilda said: 

“ What a catch in the matrimonial market he must 
be, Fanny. I don’t believe that he noticed the custard 
was scorched.” 

“ Albert Rainer is a good sort of creature, but skit- 
tish,” remarked Mrs. Cox. “ A girl should not jump 
too quickly after such bait. I am sure if we can do 
anything to help you, Fanny, we are only too willing.” 

“ Oh, I know perfectly well you do not believe in my 
chances of ever inspiring true esteem in a man,” flashed 
out Frances, with a touch of hysterical feeling in her 
voice. 

“ Yes, we do,” murmured her mother. 

Mr. Rainer was detained long at Palmetto Lodge. 
The old sister at home desired, wistfully, to knowjiow 
the old sister in Europe looked, even what she had 
talked about at the table d’hote, just as she had been 
in the habit of tracing routes on maps, for years, and 
poring over a stray copy of Murray’s guide books with 
reference to the journeys of Mrs. Hooper. She dried 
her eyes and made an effort to recover her composure. 
She recalled the cleverness and the amusing whims of 
Mrs. Hooper in willful maidenhood when they shared 
the same chamber. 

Bertha clasped her hands in her lap and leaned for- 
ward and regarded Mr. Rainer with solicitude. Her 
own features acquired an expression of resolution. Mr. 
Rainer, stimulated by the charm of this youthful list- 
ener, lent his attention to gratifying Aunt Ellen’s 
curiosity in all matters concerning his very brief ac- 
quaintance with Mrs. Hooper. Aunt Ellen, shaken 
afresh, wept. 


222 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ Poor Rachel ! To die like that in a foreign land,” 
she sobbed, pressing her black-bordered handkerchief to 
her eyes. “ Ah, well ! She acted as best suited herself. 
I wish she had thought of me more kindly. It will be 
such a little time to wait for all to be made clear be- 
tween us.” 

Then a silence fell on the group, one of those pauses 
devoid of irksome restraint, even full of a sweet sug- 
gestiveness, a holy peace that touched the man of the 
world. 

At length Mr. Rainer arose to depart. He gave his 
card to Bertha. 

“ Mind that you write me a nice, long letter from 
Bermuda,” he said. “ Write as often as you like to 
this address.” 

Doctor Russell took a pinch of snuff, meditatively. 

Mr. Rainer indicated her niece to Mrs. Russell by a 
playful gesture. ‘‘ This young lady has treated me 
very badly. I have brought her some pearls to wear 
with her lily gown, and she refuses to accept them.” 

Bertha shook her head, resolutely. 

Aunt Ellen’s sympathetic face brightened. ‘‘ Leave 
the pearls in my care,” she said, quietly. 


CHAPTER XXII 


THE UNSPOKEN WORD 

Beetha drove slowly along a sheltered road in a little 
cart, drawn by a plump pony, with Pedro beside her. 
This equipage had been purchased by her as heiress of 
Aunt Rachel Hooper. The girl was absorbed in her 
own meditations. Her idea of an heiress was a type of 
the mediaeval princesses, like the Grande Mademoiselle 
of France or Margaret Maultasch of the Tyrol, with 
castles, jewels and even provinces as their dowry. Her 
father’s badinage over her newly acquired wealth robbed 
the bequest of great importance in the estimation of 
the possessor. Indeed, the fortune of Aunt Hooper, 
consisting of the house and some railway shares and 
stocks, was modest in comparison with the modem 
colossal wealth of the American continent. Bertha 
would have reveled in the air-castles of a lively imagina- 
tion under other circumstances. As it was, the family 
found her pale and distrait, often ill at ease, and dis- 
posed to keep aloof from implied envy or open re- 
proaches. The Russells attributed her embarrassment 
to novel conditions, while the Samuel Cox household 
began to wonder, with ill-concealed chagrin, if Bertha 
would be taken up by a higher range of society, where 
they did not aspire to climb. Fanny shrewdly conjec- 
tured that an amelioration of circumstances might 
reasonably influence masculine inclination in Lieutenant 
Atherton or another officer of the garrison. Fanny 
2QS 


A BERMUDA LILY 


admired these heroes in the scarlet and gold uniforms, 
but they scarcely noticed her. 

A young man approached the road by a path, 
pushed aside some bushes and glanced down the bank at 
the passing vehicle. Bertha did not look up, but Pedro 
shot a sidelong, furtive glance through his eyelashes. 
Was the slight intentional on the part of the girl.? 
Henry Atherton hesitated a moment. Should he vault 
down the bank, shake hands with her and make inquiries 
for the welfare of her father.? He had promised Kirby 
to avoid her. Poor little girl! Perhaps he had gone 
rather far with her. There was some gossip of a rich 
aunt having died and left her a legacy. He was too 
much occupied with work and cricket, and having been 
taken up so tremendously by the ladies of the Govern- 
ment circle, his own monde, to listen much. A turning 
of the head, a glance of recognition meeting joyful 
intelligence most tempting to masculine vanity, and the 
current of these two young lives would have been 
changed. Pedro was stubborn and mute, and the Lieu- 
tenant half amused at the encounter and irresolute. 
Bertha drove on, suddenly stung by the remembrance 
of one of her father’s airy shafts of ridicule at her 
expense. The opportunity passed, and the word un- 
spoken faltered to silence. 

When the little carriage disappeared the Lieutenant 
uttered an exclamation of impatience, and followed 
slowly along the road. 

The house welcomed Bertha with a peculiar signifi- 
cance in open portal and casement. The fact of owner- 
ship seemed still an overwhelming and incredible boon 
of fortune. She had always loved Rose Hill. The silent 
and shrouded old mansion had waited for her to grow 
up from childhood. 


THE UNSPOKEN WORD 


225 


“ Mine ! My own ! ” she exclaimed in a tone of tri- 
umph, as they paused at the gate. 

Unconscious of the propinquity of Henry Atherton, 
Bertha, preoccupied and depressed by her own affairs, 
entered the garden. Pedro stole a glance over his 
shoulder several times. 

“ I hate him ! ” he muttered, stamping his foot. 

“ What troubles you.? ” said the young mistress. 

“ Nothing,” said the boy, promptly. 

Were the women who awaited her on the premises all 
her enemies.? Who may say.? The Samuel Cox family 
stood on the steps. They were clad in deep mourning, 
and there was something even aggressive in the adjust- 
ment of their crepe. Mrs. Cox reasoned that they were 
all relations, if not heirs, of the late Mrs. Hooper, and 
knew their duty. Bertha’s response to their cold saluta- 
tion was somewhat deprecating. The stout matron 
gave her a frosty peck of a kiss, and the greetings of 
her cousins was not less frigid. The girl was thus made 
to feel that she was an object of disapproval. She was 
hurt and perplexed by the situation. Was she to blame 
that good fortune had befallen her.? She would not 
have grudged prosperity to them. Ah! Were the 
women awaiting her at Rose Hill all enemies .? Aspasia, 
the younger, clad in showy finery, observed her over the 
shoulder of her mother, with a sullen brow. 

“ Here comes the white girl,” she said, insolently. 

“ Hush! Now we must serve her. She is the young 
mistress,” retorted the mother. 

“ I will not serve her,” said the daughter. “ I’m not 
going to be at the beck and call of anybody again.” 

She peered out of the small door of the kitchen at the 
group in the veranda with the concentrated malignity 
of an adder in the crevice of the masonry. 


A BERMUDA LILY 


‘‘ Patience, child,” sighed the mother. 

“ That cross old woman left money enough with her 
banker to fetch me back to Bermuda, and not a penny 
more,” pursued the girl, rehearsing a grievance. “ Who 
was my father ” 

“ He was your father,” said Aspasia, the elder, gaz- 
ing out into the shrubbery with passive calmness. 

‘‘ I thought so ! ” exclaimed the daughter, fiercely. 
“ Then the house should he minel ” 

The mother gave her a startled glance and replied: 
‘‘ The house could never be given to you, with all those 
relatives standing between. No ! That is not the way 
of the world. You have no head, child.” 

Aspasia, the younger, laughed mockingly. 

“ My dear mamma ! I do not intend to obey masters, 
old or young, in my day. What do you know of the 
world.? Not more than your mother did down yonder, 
in a cotton shift, under the palm trees.” 

Aspasia, the elder, was manifestly abashed. 

“ Speak softly of the dead,” she whispered, raising a 
finger warningly. ‘‘You are so like her! She was a 
wise woman, too. The people feared her.” 

A grey pallor crept over both faces, as if some 
shadow of superstition touched them, and mother and 
daughter looked into each other’s eyes. 

“ Was she an Obeah worshipper.? ” asked the latter, 
half curiously, half recklessly. 

Aspasia bowed, not only her head, but her body, sev- 
eral times in assent. 

“ Perhaps I am to be one also, since I am like her,” 
suggested the girl, stepping forth on the terrace with 
an innocent air. 

Matilda descried her. 


THE UNSPOKEN WORD 


227 


“ I am convinced that girl has grown up a perfect 
hussy, with her foreign ideas,” she said. 

“ I should like to smack her with my fan,” echoed 
Mrs. Cox. 

Whereupon Frances added : ‘‘ She will come to no 
good. Depend upon it.” 

The trio scanned Bertha’s frock of fresh lilac, with 
a black sash, and a black ribbon around a straw hat. 

“ Perhaps I might choose some little souvenir of 
Rachel Hooper,” suggested Mrs. Cox, tartly, and 
smoothed her veil over her shoulders. 

“ If you like,” murmured Bertha. 

“ You are not wearing true mourning, and you 
should, if anyone,” said Matilda in a scarcely less acri- 
monious mood of criticism. 

Frances looked pinched and yellow in her sable garb. 
She had an even more injured mien than either her 
mother or sister. Bitter envy filled her soul. Ah! 
Everhard’s child had all the luck in everything! 

The ladies roamed about Rose Hill at their ease. 
They gathered flowers in the neglected garden from the 
untrammeled luxury of blooming masses draping the 
walls and clinging to the branches of adjacent shrub- 
bery. They inspected every nook and corner of the 
interior. The mansion was familiar to them in all 
aspects, but it had now a peculiar fascination as be- 
longing to young Bertha. They traversed the vesti- 
bule and Fanny insisted on setting the pendulum of the 
tall clock, so long silent, in motion, whereby a brass 
disc moved gilded letters across a space above with the 
words “ vigila ora.” To watch and pray in the coming 
years — was that the greeting of the old clock, with its 
warning of the fleeting passage of time.? Bertha’s face 
darkened strangely as she looked at it. 


A BERMUDA LILY 


The furniture was old-fashioned and cumbersome, 
the curtains stiff and faded, and the ornaments sparse, 
for Mrs. Hooper had never sought to render her home 
especially attractive. Her abode was as devoid of 
souvenirs as her life was arid in friends. The couple 
were remembered as contemporaries by the islands, yet 
few cared much even for their memory. The Hoopers 
had been rolling stones for years. If the husband had 
ever wished to return to terminate his days in his birth- 
place the discontent of his wife had thwarted the plan. 

Mrs. Cox suggested that a table and several chairs, 
although quite out of date, would be useful in her own 
dining room. Fanny more than hinted that a curious 
lacquer stand would enable her to serve an afternoon 
tea with some sort of dignity. They lingered in the 
library to look over stray volumes. The books of Mr. 
Hooper were neither numerous nor rare, but the pro- 
tection of glass cases, as well as the care of the house- 
keeper, had kept them in good preservation. The 
shelves boasted of no complete set of the Gentleman’s 
Magazine, with uncut pages, or precious folio a hun- 
dred years old, untouched and unread. Matilda took 
possession of a large bound volume of Punch, collected 
in the early days of the famous periodical. She laughed 
at the old jests of the keen-witted, yet good-natured, 
judge of society and public life when he made his first 
bow to the world in 1841, as the offspring of all those 
ephemeral leaflets which had fluttered forth from the 
press in the London streets, cut a caper, and vanished : 
the Wasp, the Penny Satirist, the Wag, the Ass, 
Asmodeus, Figaro, or the Beast of Burden. The jolly 
Matilda said that her husband would so much like the 
volume. 

“ Oh, do take it,” said Bertha. 


THE UNSPOKEN WORD 


229 


“ But your father may prize the library when he 
comes here to live,” said Fanny with some compunction, 

“ I wish papa would consent to live here,” sighed 
Bertha. 

“No!” exclaimed Pedro, petulantly. “Let us go 
home now.” 

The ladies laughed. 

Aspasia, the younger, had lingered on the terrace, 
scanning the highway for any diversion. She grasped 
a branch of oleander, with pale, saffron-tinted flowers, 
and leaned her cheek against it, mindful of a graceful 
pose in the estimation of a chance observer. She was 
true offspring of the devil. According to the Spanish 
adage, the devil is wise because he is very old. 

An officer vaulted lightly over a low boundary wall 
and followed Bertha with eager precipitation, then 
paused as she joined her relatives on the veranda. He 
turned away, and met the soft, magnetic glance of the 
younger Aspasia, as she stood in the fragrant shadow 
of oleander bloom. The young woman, descendant of 
African Obeah worshippers and visitor of European 
resorts as hand-maiden of Mrs. Hooper, understood 
the situation. He came slowly towards her, regarding 
her with bold, half-curious admiration. She waited in 
her insolently graceful pose for him to speak. 

“Will you give me a flower.?” he inquired in a 
caressing tone. 

She smiled, revealing white teeth between rich, red 
lips, shook her head, and allowed the branch to fly 
back, thus shedding a shower of rosy petals down on 
her hair and shoulders. 

“ Pardon ! These flowers are quite unworthy of 
monsieur’s acceptance,” she replied in French, with a 
piquant accent. 


230 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ Do you live here? I never saw you before,” he 
continued. 

“ Ah, no ! I have lived in Europe for many years, 
but now my — protectress is dead,” she said, and her 
long, silky eyelashes drooped for a moment. “ If mon- 
sieur should happen to pass on the shore, near Honey- 
moon Cottage, to-morrow afternoon, I can promise him 
far better flowers.” 

“ Perhaps I will come,” he assented, twisting his 
moustache. 

He nodded farewell, paused to look at the house 
once more, and strolled away. 

“ Of course he will come. A handsome gentleman, 
and much bored,” was the mental comment of the siren, 
who once more pulled down the spray of oleander blos- 
soms and hid her face in it, as if to conceal a furtive 
smile of triumph from all eyes. 

Bertha drove away in the pony cart. 

“ How they must envy me,” she thought. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


A HUMAN HARP 

The spring of temperate climates had returned to 
the Coral Islands with splendor of color and fragrance, 
as if in obedience to the fiat of the sun-god. The olean- 
der, supplanting the rose, now held full sway over this 
realm of mid-ocean in masses of bloom, ranging from 
white, pale pink and mauve to rich crimson double flow- 
ers. Aloes formed thickets, and the Spanish bayonet 
bristled in hedges or hung on the flanks of rocks. The 
Pride of India tree had already decked its branches 
with delicate lilac clusters, while the poinsettia, as the 
star of Easter, had burned out its red petals, like the 
flicker of an expiring flame on leafless boughs. The 
sea, in tranquil mood, seemed to reflect the redundant 
beauty of the shore as the ripples crept over the shoals 
in those tender silvery and pearly reflections, tinged 
with green, rose and amethyst peculiar to these islands. 

Joy and hope, responsive to all the ethereal pulses 
of the universe, were the right of every creature dwell- 
ing here, but the heart of Bertha made no response to 
the greetings of rejoicing Nature. A great trouble 
had fallen upon her, which baffled and perplexed her 
inexperience, and was the more intolerable that she kept 
the secret locked in her own breast. Just as her maiden- 
hood was unfolding to the gentle influences of being 
wooed by a youth superior in every attribute to the 
men about her, a mighty wind, similar to a native hur- 
ricane, had smitten her. Captain Kirby had lingered 
231 


2S2 


A BERMUDA LILY 


at her stall at a bazaar, and solicited her advice as to 
a suitable gift to send to the fiancee in England of his 
friend, Lieutenant Atherton, who would soon be going 
off to be married. The mentor had fired this shot at a 
woman, convinced of his duty, and she blanched in 
silence. The news of Aunt Hooper’s death ensued. 
Bertha was, by turns, bewildered, stupefied and eagerly 
expectant of a renewal of happiness such as she had 
previously enjoyed. Again, as weeks and months 
elapsed, and Henry Atherton came no more to the head- 
land, she suffered all the restless disquietude of doubt, 
bitter suspicion, even caprices of half-formed resolu- 
tions of action, only to shrink back into herself, with 
innate conviction of folly the next moment. Sorrow 
at nineteen is fiercely resented, and, as an intensely 
tragic phase of indefinable pain, may crush and thwart 
the sweetness of a girl’s temperament, be eventually 
thrown lightly aside for another lover, or arouse un- 
tried depths of moral strength, balancing good and 
evil in a most critical way. Bertha had an enigma to 
solve, and yet must remain passive, in dull inaction, 
just because she was a woman. She may have inherited 
the disposition ascribed by the poet Moore to the 
daughters of Bermuda of a tenderness which imparts 
a soft fascination of manner in their general inter- 
course with those about them. In addition she cer- 
tainly had some exalted Teutonic trait of heroic 
sentiment, even passion, doubtless derived by direct 
transmission from the race of her own father. She had 
plighted her troth in that upper world of the giddy 
height of lighthouse tower, when Henry Atherton pro- 
tected her on the gallery and pressed a kiss on her lips, 
while the gusts of an impending storm billowed around 
them, once and forever! In the great joy that filled 


A HUMAN HARP 


her soul she could have cast herself, weeping, on the 
breast of this lover after they reached home, thus pro- 
claiming her preference to her father ; but the Lieuten- 
ant departed in evasion of an open declaration of love. 
Ah! When Captain Kirby spoke she understood the 
true reason of his reticence, and made generous, pity- 
ing excuse for him. He was bound in honor to another 
girl. Bertha revered too much the sacred character of 
betrothal to tamper with it. She would have blushed 
with a sense of guilt to look her father in the face and 
confess she was trying to lure a young man from his 
duty to her side. Hence her proud reserve in keeping 
her secret close. Henry Atherton had no right to seek 
her, and she must not tempt him by glance or word 
to do so. He belonged to another. In the depths of 
her heart she was indignant at the method of brusque 
interference adopted by Captain Kirby as much for 
Henry Atherton as for herself. Was it necessary that 
the silken and gossamer meshes of increasing intimacy 
should be severed in public, by the stroke of a poignard 
wielded by the hand of friendship.? She often arose, 
after wakeful hours, when plentiful tears had been shed 
on her pillow, in perverse humor, dispirited and spent 
in the moral struggle between self and circumstances. 
Why should another girl rob her of her rights.? She 
loved Henry Atherton with all the devotion of which 
her soul was capable. She was, equally confident that 
he loved her. Then a season of calmness would follow, 
of waiting and hoping that he was about to hasten to 
her with a beaming face and explain that all obstacles 
in their path had been swept away, and they might yet 
belong to each other. Bertha’s conscience might have 
been shocked and startled had some confessor advised 
her that her wish, cradled in endless reveries, meant the 


2S4 


A BERMUDA LILY 


sacrifice, the entire wreck of the happiness of the other 
girl, to whom the precedence of an existing engagement 
even appertained. The need of a confidante and consoler 
added to her sorrow. Deprived of the intuitive sym- 
pathy of a mother, such expansion would have been 
difficult. She shrank instinctively from the mocking 
curiosity to be read in the eyes of Cousin Frances, and 
even more from the usually genial and expansive Mrs. 
Cox, especially after she waxed curdled over the 
Hooper inheritance. Aunt Ellen feared the attachment 
of the young officer had proved a fragile chain, easily 
broken, and waited for her niece to speak. Then had 
occurred the death of her eccentric sister in Europe, a 
blow that effectually banished other interests. Aunt 
Ellen, absorbed in her own grievances of neglect and 
reminiscences, seemed to have forgotten Henry Ather- 
ton. There remained the supreme power of her own 
father. Everhard perceived nothing of the state of 
feeling of his daughter beyond the rather amusing 
phase of Aunt Hooper’s preferences in matters of 
will-making. Otherwise Bertha pursued her usual rou- 
tine, a half-grown maiden in the estimation of her 
parent, tractable, obedient, and his daily companion, 
with immature ideas on most affairs, and to whose 
future he had never given a thought. Oddly enough, 
by some subtle link of similarity of organization, father 
and child had received a blow on these recent occasions 
of mingling with their fellow creatures. Were they 
made for society? Was it only discords of memory 
which unnerved the elderly man? Was he subsequently 
affected by the death of his sister-in-law? He yielded 
to lapses of abstraction, moody irritability and lassi- 
tude more frequently than formerly. Those irregulari- 
ties of habit, which Bertha had learned to dread as a 


A HUMAN HARP 


child, from her mother, had become more marked. 
Everhard roamed through house and garden all night, 
read, wrote, and talked aloud, then retired until a late 
hour the ensuing day, with closed shutters, no member 
of the household venturing to disturb his slumbers. 

Doctor Russell occasionally looked in at the cottage, 
and shook the finger of admonition at his brother-in- 
law. Bertha was not questioned, but more than once 
she overheard the old physician’s remarks. 

“ You are looking out of sorts, Everhard. Not 
quite yourself, eh.? Try to be in the fresh air as much 
as possible, and no poison sleep — mind! The heart 
pays too dearly for that sort of thing, you know.” 

“ I promise,” Everhard would reply, with a familiar 
intonation of weariness and impatience. 

Expectant of the return of the officer, Bertha men- 
tioned him to her father with a timidity which would 
have attracted the attention of a companion less self- 
absorbed. Had her father, by chance, met the two 
soldiers in a morning visit to Hamilton ? The Lieuten- 
ant seemed to have given up the German readings. 
Everhard shrugged his shoulders slightly and yawned. 

“ He has found other recreations more diverting 
than my society, I suppose,” he said, carelessly. 

Bertha looked at him. An exclamation trembled on 
her lips. She longed to fly to his side and embrace him 
with the cry: “ Oh, my father! You are blind not to 
see that he came for me. It is my right of woman- 
hood.” 

But she checked the impulse, and sought untried 
chords on the harp, groping amidst the confusion of 
her own thoughts for a clue to fresh combinations of 
minor notes, as it were. 

“ What do I know of the true character of our young 


236 


A BERMUDA LILY 


officer? ” pursued Everhard. “ He is a pleasant lad 
enough to spend an hour over Goethe or Heine, and 
comes from the outside world. Voltaire’s verdict was: 
‘ When I meet a subtle and progressive Englishman, I 
say to myself: ‘‘Here is a Norman; he arrived with 
William, the Conqueror. If he is a brave man and very 
polite, he came with the Plantagenets, and if a brutal 
one, he is a Dane.” ’ Is the Lieutenant Norman or 
Dane? ” 

Bertha did not reply. 

“ The ideal man of Aristotle was a searcher after 
truth,” said her father, pacing the narrow path before 
the cottage door. “ To my thinking, the creature 
whom moralists call worm has far too many sordid 
cares ever drawing him down to earth. Plato believed 
all life descended from a region where the human soul, 
at least, has had experience of powers wider than those 
to which incarnation for a season may limit her. The 
argument is famihar enough that such knowledge as the 
soul possesses here is mainly reminiscent, her faculties 
indicating, by their very nature, that she has derived 
them from an antecedent existence and another world.” 

The speaker stretched forth both arms towards the 
horizon. 

“Bah!” he exclaimed. “Cicero knew all when he 
demanded what there is in human knowledge, or the 
short span of this life, that can appear great to the wise 
one whose mind is always so upon its guard nothing 
befalls which is unexpected. Consider what absolute 
repose in infinity, immensity without limit or discord, 
will be hereafter.” 

Bertha listened, but her father’s soliloquies were as 
the beating of the surf on the strand to her. Nature 
revolted against his precepts in her need of warm. 


A HUMAN HARP 


237 


human sympathy. Love and hope would flutter rain- 
bow-tinted wings in defiance of chill reason. Age arose, 
fatigued after wakeful hours ; youth asserted the elas- 
ticity of health unconsciously. In addition, Henry 
Atherton might return at any hour, with his light, 
ringing footstep, and bring a smile of welcome even to 
her father’s face. She approached the latter and laid 
her hand on his arm. Assuredly he was growing old. 
Decrepitude seemed to have suddenly bowed his fragile 
form with a more perceptible stoop of the shoulders, 
and drawn fine lines of wrinkles, even deep furrows, on 
his cheek and brow of the texture of parchment. 

“ Would you like to go away.^ ” she demanded with 
anxiety. 

He regarded her steadfastly and knitted his brows. 

“ Where ? ” he retorted. 

“ To travel in the States or Europe,” she said, 
lightly. “We might use some of Aunt Rachel’s money 
for the purpose.” 

He shook his head. 

“ Too late! It all comes too late! Nonsense, child! 
Leave me here in peace on the Bermuda Reef. If you 
wish to travel I will smoke my pipe and await your 
return.” 

She gazed at him wistfully. 

“ Would you miss me if I went away.? ” 

She put the question tremulously, doubtfully. He 
measured her slowly with a glance of surprise. 

“ Assuredly,” he said in a negligent tone. “ Ah ! I 
forget occasionally that I am addressing an heiress. 
Suitors will be flocking to Noah’s Ark, in time. No 
doubt the Scotch proverb holds as good in our island 
paradise as elsewhere : ‘ A tocherless dame sits lang at 
hame.’ ” 


238 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ Do not laugh at me, sir,” Bertha retorted, glad of 
his change of mood. “ I do not understand Aunt 
Rachel’s choice of me.” 

“ I understand it. You are my daughter,” said 
Everhard, quietly. 

‘‘ She cared for you, papa.? ” 

“Perhaps.” 

“ Many women must have cared for you, papa.” 

“ Yeomen have usually been kind to me.” 

At such a juncture Pedro would pluck Bertha’s 
sleeve and urge, coaxingly : “ Don’t go away ! ” 

“ No,” she rejoined, clasping the boy’s neck and slip- 
ping her other hand through her father’s arm. 

Pedro counted with his forefinger. “We are three. 
Like that,” he said with contentment. 

When the girl’s courage flagged in the lapse of suc- 
ceeding weeks, and her father’s chamber remained 
closed or he was absent in the towns, she turned to the 
child-soul, almost entreatingly, as the spent wayfarer 
stoops to the bubbling rill of spring in the woods. She 
thought aloud as Pedro played with the monkey and 
fed the flamingo from his hand, about the charms, 
philtres and antidotes of love, drawn from the sources 
of old romances and fairy lore. 

“ Pedro, do you believe in the youth of Gaza, who 
acquired magical faculties from the priests of Memphis, 
and wrote words on Cyprian brass to win a fair maid.? ” 

Pedro nodded and smoothed the flamingo’s neck. 

“ Could you get me an amulet from some old witch 
here in Bermuda to keep a sweetheart true? A pansy 
plucked for Queen Titania by Puck, for example, a 
sprig of basil, vervain, some cummin-seed, or even a 
charm of mandrake-root? ” 

“ Perhaps,” said the boy. 


A HUMAN HARP 


239 


“ Oh, Pedro, will you go over to the engineers’ camp 
with this lily, and ask him to come back once more — 
just to read German with papa? ” sighed Bertha, un- 
mindful of Captain Kirby’s warning. 

Pedro’s soft face clouded. 

‘‘The officer? No. We were very well before he 
came. Now we are so happy without him. He calls 
me a nigger.” 

Then he would run away to console the heron for 
possible neglect. Did the lad, in his capricious and 
volatile spirit, understand, or care, for her trouble? 

“ He is only a child,” she mused, and turned again 
to her harp as the sole friend capable of solacing and 
interpreting grief. 

The hour of the evening meal came and passed un- 
noticed. Everhard had fallen asleep in his chair. 
Pedro had slipped away out of doors. The darkness 
of night succeeded the spring twilight, shrouding the 
garden in soft obscurity and pervading the room. 
Bertha ceased to touch the harp, awaiting her father’s 
awakening. She sat in the window and tears fell on 
her hands. Her thoughts were of the young man who 
had come into her life, like a dream, and was gone 
before the high noon of fulfillment had been reached. 
Ah! Would he ever return? A chill and sad sense of 
change awed and troubled her. All seemed to be slip- 
ping away from her grasp, even the transient visions of 
happiness had melted into thin air. How the cloud- 
capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn tem- 
ples built of sunset clouds faded, leaving not a rack 
behind. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


“BY THE SHADE OF A CALABASH TREE” 

On a day of early autumn Mr. Albert Rainer, very 
dapper as to raiment of pearl grey hue, white waist- 
coat and gaiters, with a carnation pink in his button- 
hole, quitted the road, crossed several boundaries in 
a circuitous, not to say mysterious, manner and ap- 
proached a calabash tree. 

Now the calabash fulfilled its destiny of birth, 
growth and decay like others of its kind. Rising to a 
height of thirty feet, it developed purple, yellow and 
crimson flowers in their season, green gourds on the 
crown, and at the tip of slender branches, and might 
yet serve utility in the domestic economy as wood, 
carved, stained and polished. This particular tree en- 
joyed the fame of having sheltered the poet, Thomas 
Moore, such time as the bard received the appointment 
of Vice-Registrar of the Court of Admiralty at Ber- 
muda. Here the sweet song-writer, who set the maid- 
ens of a past generation warbling his love ditties, 
dreamed of Nea in melodious measure in her island 
home, but is reputed to have longed for Pall-Mall, and 
the precincts of the Middle Temple as well. 

Hither came Albert Rainer as he had sought the 
south shore on another occasion. He was half amused 
at his own whim of visiting the calabash tree. Was he 
not a pilgrim who seeks a shrine, expectant of miracles ? 
He seated himself in the shade of the tree, took out a 
note-book and pencil, and attempted to express his 
24,0 


BY THE SHADE OF A CALABASH Ml 


feelings in verse. He hoped inspiration would come 
to him in this golden atmosphere which still environed 
the memory of the poet. He had never written a line 
of poetry, or even made a rhyme, in his life. The 
effort proved unsuccessful; the springs of fancy were 
not loosened by frequenting a spot sacred to the muse. 
Who shall say that the calabash did not commune with 
this prosaic mortal, in spirit, imparting a whole world 
of new hopes and aspirations, mingled with some touch 
of credence in the primitive tree worship of earlier 
days.f^ Surely in the green realm of rippling leaves 
and swaying branches dwelt airy sprites and graceful 
beings ready to whisper secrets to a lover. The trim 
little gentleman of a plump figure, seated there, thus 
designated himself in the complacency of a supreme 
egotism. In swift and absolute capitulation he was 
prepared to agree with Moore, that : “ Disguise our 
bondage as we will, ’Tis woman, woman rules us still.” 

The hidden life of the tree was like the growth of a 
new passion in his own breast. Now, for the first time, 
he attained his full height and dignity of manhood. 
His mood was radiant. He had no doubts as to his 
ultimate success in winning the affection of Bertha. 
The occasions of their frequent meetings since his own 
establishment on the footing of an intimate friend of 
the whole family favored the idea. The subtle convic- 
tion of this sentiment and the bond of intelligence 
existing between them in the settlement of Mrs. Hoop- 
er’s affairs was a link not shared by others. Bertha 
trusted him and liked him. He was sure of that. De- 
licious affinity, drawing two souls together through 
time and space, to be no more separated! 

Thus, as he sat under the calabash tree, with the 
note-book open on his knee, earth bloomed afresh, and 


A BERMUDA LILY 


serene, immeasurable depths of pure sky were revealed 
by the parting of the clouds out over the sea. Alas! 
The man of maturity tasted a rapture that should have 
been his portion twenty years earlier. He did not ques- 
tion, in the very eagerness of his own necessity of a sim- 
ilar response, the holding of the same brimming chalice 
to the rosy lips of a young girl. From the date of meet- 
ing Bertha on the South Shore a secret spring of pas- 
sion had moved him, beyond the sphere of the superficial 
reflexes of the constructive imagination of man in the 
absorption and positive integration of novel emotions. 
His aim was ardent, yet blended of a curious medley of 
motives. Love follows no measure of allotted time, but 
buds and blossoms in an hour. He had not awaited the 
musings under the poet’s tree to realize that each crea- 
ture seeks perfection in another. Mr. Rainer was not 
looking about him for a helpmate in the settlement of a 
sober and prudent maturity in any prosaic fashion. 
Far from it. His plan had been to live for himself. 
A girl decked like a lily had captivated his fancy. He 
was disposed to confirm Goethe’s assertion : “ A hearth 
of one’s own and a good wife are worth gold and 
pearls.” 

His voyages to Bermuda on his yacht had brought 
him into relations of intimacy with the Cox family. 
He visited the Captain at the Port, when the Chinese 
cook may have served those Celestial mushrooms re- 
puted to provoke mirth, the fukw-au and the titau, so 
hearty was the laughter. He dined with the Samuel 
Cox circle at St. Georges, but more often found his way 
to Palmetto Lodge, where Aunt Ellen made him wel- 
come in her sympathetic, matronly way. She seldom 
failed to have one or more of her nieces with her on such 
occasions. The good lady’s natural serenity of dis- 


BY THE SHADE OF A CALABASH 243 


position returned in the intercourse with the celebrated 
King of Finance, as a private citizen, to the marked 
satisfaction of her husband, who had found her a de- 
pressed and abstracted opponent in their evening game 
of cribbage, when the old couple were wont to wax 
animated in victory or defeat to the verge of temper. 

How good of you to come to see a dull old woman 
like me,” Aunt Ellen would exclaim. 

“ Blood is thicker than water,” Mr. Rainer would 
rejoin. “ Are we not fellow ’Mudians.f^ I seem to come 
home here.” 

“ I hope you will always feel so, my dear,” said Aunt 
Ellen. 

This matchmaker had not fully decided on his prefer- 
ences, but she determined, over her knitting, that he 
should choose a bride of the race of Cox. What could 
be more fitting.? As a lad, his mother had been nursed 
by herself, thus establishing a claim of confidence, and 
in manhood he had met Mrs. Hooper in Europe, and 
even appended his name to her will. 

Frances was useful and ingratiating at Palmetto 
Lodge in those days ; Bertha was listless and indifferent. 
Aunt Ellen, seated in her arm-chair in the cool and 
shaded sitting room, with the dark, wooden floor, pol- 
ished like a mirror, wove many-tinted threads of wily 
machinations to ensure the happiness of others, into her 
hand work, and was disposed to consider favorably the 
chances of the mature Fanny. In reality, the yachts- 
man tolerated Miss Cox with the masculine benevolence 
of one whose thoughts were elsewhere. 

Mr. Rainer could scarcely flatter himself that he had 
established congenial relations with the cottage on the 
headland. Everhard, detached from the routine of 


244 


A BERMUDA LILY 


giving lessons in the towns, at the entreaty of his 
daughter, was haughty in bearing to the King of 
Finance. If this indifference piqued the latter he was 
not dismayed, as it occasioned no obstacle to his meet- 
ing Bertha elsewhere. Ah! There was the sweet bond 
of mutual intelligence between Bertha and himself to 
stir his pulses and furnish food for soft reveries. The 
girl lent herself to his harmless schemes of pleasing Mrs. 
Russell, as having ministered to his family when he was 
a lad on the South Shore. What stolen moments of 
half-whispered conferences, resumed at pleasure, he 
sought in daily intercourse as to Aunt Ellen’s prefer- 
ences in embroidered table covers! Bertha contributed 
her share to further his projects with a sense of weari- 
ness and abstraction of which she was ashamed, as the 
gratification of Aunt Ellen was involved. She was too 
inexperienced and unconscious to find the zeal of the 
newcomer unusual. In the act of admiring arabesque 
Turkish designs, brought by Mr. Rainer from the 
yacht, Bertha’s thoughts strayed to a certain morning 
which represented the opening of life to her, when she 
had dipped into the sparkling bath of the cave, and 
the man-of-war came into port with Lieutenant Ather- 
ton on board. How long ago all that had happened. 

Mr. Rainer formed a resolution under the calabash. 
He had dallied long enough. He would ask Bertha to 
marry him and depart with him on the yacht. A bold 
Corsair would thus carry off a bride from the Coral 
Isles. 

“ After all, if I could have expressed my feelings in 
verse, it would only have been like a valentine or a 
motto,” he soliloquized, rising to his feet and replacing 
the note-book in his coat pocket. 


BY THE SHADE OF A CALABASH U5 


Then he walked away without another glance at the 
poet’s tree. 

He had invited Doctor Russell, his wife and niece to 
a dramatic entertainment at the theater of the garrison 
on the following evening with this aim in view. 


CHAPTER XXV 


TROPICAL MOONLIGHT 

The tropical moon is a baleful and evil influence, 
working mischief to the sons of men. The serene orb 
that elsewhere climbs a star-strewn pathway and shines 
with a remote and sad lustre on lonely wastes of snow 
is, in the sphere of the warm seas and palm forests, a 
great golden disc full of deceitful witchery. The rays 
of light shed abroad from her wide-spreading effulgence 
are the piercing arrows that beat on human brains 
with madness in slumber, penetrate the moist depths 
of rank vegetation only to distil langorous odors and 
subtle, intoxicating sap, and slay the fish of translucent 
depths, or render them poisonous as food. The Biblical 
promise was needed as a shield of righteousness over 
the Coral Islands on the night of which Mr. Albert 
Rainer had thought when musing in the shade of the 
calabash tree : “ The sun shall not smite thee by day, 
nor the moon by night.” 

Bermuda basked in this radiance on an autumn 
evening, a world of enchantment, encircled by a wide 
zone of shining waters. The snowy houses were 
grouped into towns and hamlets, or gleamed in solitude, 
embowered in gardens, with long stretches of white 
road traversing the archipelago with the sinuosities of 
a ribbon winding in and out of the shadows. The rocks 
were veiled in filmy wreaths of impalpable gloom, while 
a luminous rain of gold, silver and pure white fell on 
all the open spaces of harbor and countryside, the 
246 


TROPICAL MOONLIGHT 


247 


lighthouse beacon waxing red and dim in the pervading 
glory. 

The children of Mylitta began to stir to life wherever 
was rank soil and dark nook, grasping a hold on yield- 
ing weakness, with fang and hooked thorn, and lulling 
the senses to torpor with the scents of invisible censers. 

Down in a sheltered dell the hedges of aloes, cacti 
and tangled creepers shrouded a small house, touched 
by the transfiguring beauty of the hour into a sem- 
blance of purity and repose. The cedar trees of 
ancient and gnarled growth wove thick darkness over 
the dazzling white road, the first forming sharply a 
defined silhouette of black boughs and twigs on the 
ground which gradually deepened in obscurity to 
opaque masses, until the moon shone faintly through 
the foliage, as if it were prison bars. 

The flowers of night had in this retreat a haunt of 
predilection. The cereus clung to tree trunks, frail 
sprays trembled in the breeze, attracting the moths and 
humming insects by powerful fragrance, the heavy 
sweetness of the ixora stifled and oppressed the in- 
truder, while the ipomoea opened satiny patines in every 
hedge, only to shrivel in the first rays of dawn. That 
venomous little plant, the Brinvilliers spigelia anthel- 
mia, of the West Indies found a lurking place amidst 
the unkempt disorder of the cottage garden patch, with 
bois chataigne and the stalked and spotted arum, the 
dumb cane. These resembled the reptiles awaiting vic- 
tims. The inmate of the house would seem to esteem 
these vipers of the vegetable kingdom with a certain 
curiosity, as sentinels and guardians of her kingdom 
with power to wound or slay in cup and wreathed 
bouquet. If she dwelt long in this dell she would make 
herself feared, as a sort of Canidia, protected by an 


248 


A BERMUDA LELY 


enclosure of shrubs and vines possessing mystical prop- 
erties, and dealing in witch spells of charms and 
philtres ; her emblem the blighted wild fig tree, which 
bears neither fruit nor flower. Akin to her surround- 
ings she was one of those rich exotics, full of the pride 
of health, life and vanity that expand their flaunting 
petals to lure flies, crush and feed on their substance. 
This human moon-flower robed herself before a mirror 
in the little house in softest silken tissues that yielded 
to the supple lines of her graceful form in harmonious 
draperies. She was aware, as she gazed at her reflected 
image, that she was the most beautiful woman of this 
little world. 

‘‘Not a bad toilette,” said Aspasia, the younger, 
aloud. “ I might be going to a Cafe Chantant on the 
Champs Elysees. Ciel ! At Paris, for example, I would 
attract as la belle Creole^ get made the fashion.” 

A vampire darted in noiseless flight among the cedar 
trees overshadowing the road. One would like to know 
the vampire’s true opinion of men and things below. 
Did it encounter the hoary bat and the silver-haired, in 
those weird flittings through the branches, like some 
uncanny spirit of ancestry blown by gales from the 
continent of North America, as the vampire fore- 
fathers came from the West Indies, and agree, fully, 
with these comrades that nothing is of actual impor- 
tance in this world save catching insects for supper, 
fulfilling the duties of rearing a family, and spending 
the garish, tiresome hours of day hanging suspended, 
head downward, in the recesses of some damp cave or 
the trunk of a tree, in delicious repose.'^ The bat is 
not a cheerful creature ; therefore the vanity of young 
Aspasia must have been regarded in a pessimistic and 
cynical vein. 


TROPICAL MOONLIGHT 


M9 


At the same hour Bertha went to a theater, for the 
first time in her life, on the invitation of Mr. Rainer. 
The revelry was too modest for Aunt Ellen to object 
to laying aside her crepe in favor of white lace on the 
occasion; indeed, she experienced a childish pleasure in 
so doing. Her husband was scarcely less naively 
diverted. The old couple held within their hearts a 
perennial source of interest in their fellow creatures, 
which may be the true fountain of youth. 

The amateur theater of the barracks made a brave 
show, on the occasion, of twinkling chandeliers and a 
tiny stage and a curtain designed by an artilleryman 
of artistic qualifications, representing Gibb’s HiU with 
the lighthouse as a purple height rising above the bluest 
of seas, and real footlights. The audience gathered to 
do honor to the talent of the garrison rendered the 
scene brilliant. The ladies were in full dress, with 
rounded shoulders, plump backs and fair arms liberally 
displayed, while the uniforms of the men, scarlet, blue 
and gold, lent additional color. 

Young Bertha, in her lilac frock, had a flush of ex- 
citement on her cheek as she gazed at the stage. Then 
the national anthem was played. His Excellency the 
Governor, with his wife and staff, entered to take the 
place of honor in the front range of seats, and the play 
began. If Bertha was pleased the yachtsman was in- 
terested. He assured her, in a tender undertone, that 
he had never enjoyed Covent Garden, the Comedie 
Fran9aise or La Scala as much as this little amateur 
theater with her by his side. Did she understand his 
true meaning.? He observed her complacently, himself 
in careful evening dress. Bertha did not change color. 

“ Papa knows those great theaters,” she said, medi- 
tatively. 


250 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“Would you like to visit them? ” 

“ I think not.” 

The audience was indulgent and warmly applauded 
the surgeon’s wife as leading lady, and evinced suitable 
appreciation of the versatility of that bright particular 
star, the clever Major, who organized all similar dra- 
matic diversions. 

A close observer might have noticed a sudden change 
in Bertha. A young officer entered the theater, and 
meeting full her startled glance of recognition, saluted 
her, as well as Aunt Ellen, then sauntered on to take 
a chair near the Governor’s lady. A wave of crimson 
mounted to Bertha’s brow, then faded, leaving her pale 
and abstracted. Her responses to Mr. Rainer’s re- 
marks were so much at random that he left her with 
gaze fixed steadily on the scene and turned to Aunt 
Ellen. The matron beamed on him with her most ami- 
able smile, which seemed to invite confidence. 

“ May I walk around the shore road with Bertha, 
and join you further on? ” he asked, impulsively. “ I 
have something to say to her to-night.” 

Mrs. Russell looked at him inquiringly. 

“ I wish to ask her to marry me,” he said, abruptly. 

Aunt Ellen’s mild countenance glowed with satisfac- 
tion. 

“ Oh, my dear, I am glad ! ” she exclaimed, under 
cover of the music and the hum of voices. “ So it is 
Bertha ? I did not know. I wish you every happiness.” 

Doctor Russell looked at Lieutenant Atherton 
through his spectacles and remarked to his niece in 
brisk, chirping tones: 

“ The engineer who lunched with us a year or more 
ago, as you may remember, is ordered to the West 
Indian station. The corps leave to-morrow.” 


TROPICAL MOONLIGHT 


251 


“ Where is he going? ” demanded Bertha in a con- 
strained tone, after a pause. 

“ J amaica, I fancy,” said the old physician. 

Going away from the Coral Isles ! The girl again 
stiffened herself to bear a cruel blow, as when sub- 
jected to the cool scrutiny of Captain Kirby on a for- 
mer occasion. She did not faint or fall. Was she 
sorrowful over the departure of Henry Atherton. 
There he sat, in the same room with her, yet separated 
by an impassable gulf. He did not look at her again, 
while he chatted with Her Excellency. No doubt he 
would wait to speak with her at the door of the theater. 
At least he might make excuse to bid the Russells fare- 
well. Ah! What would he have to say to her? She 
counted the precious moments of propinquity with the 
man she loved in heart-throbs of doubt, anxiety and 
tremulous anticipation. If he should give her a word 
or a sign that all was well, his affection unchanged, and 
they must wait patiently in separation, as they had 
dwelt near each other here without meeting. Hope 
awoke anew in her breast; and yet there was ever the 
barrier between them of the plighted bride in England. 
Bertha’s surroundings grew vague, the stage receded; 
she saw and felt only the presence of one. 

Altogether it was an agreeable and successful even- 
ing, as the Governor blandly affirmed, and undoubtedly 
the actors enjoyed it more than their audience, after 
the manner of amateur theatricals, when the childish 
element of making believe behind the scenes, with attend- 
ant struttings on a mimic stage is apt to intoxicate the 
most sober head. 

Bertha consented to walk on with Mr. Rainer in the 
moonlight, while Aunt Ellen made excuse of delivering 
a message before overtaking them on the homeward 


252 


A BERMUDA LILY 


road. Lieutenant Atherton was not lingering at the 
door of the theater. Instead he had gone behind the 
scenes to compliment the leading lady in order to avoid 
Bertha. Perhaps he would follow her, the girl reasoned 
wistfully. 

“ Will you take my arm ? ” said Mr. Rainer in a tone 
of protecting tenderness. 

“ Oh, dear, no,” replied Bertha, promptly, gathering 
up her dress from the dust of the highway. “ I never 
accept anyone’s arm but papa’s, you know.” 

‘‘ You surely do not esteem me as a stranger,” was 
the slightly injured protest of Mr. Rainer. 

“ A stranger.? ” she repeated, glancing over her 
shoulder. “ No. You seem quite like one of the 
family.” 

Her unconcerned bearing should have rendered a 
suitor distrustful, but this King of Finance had dallied 
with a similar situation too often to be discountenanced. 
Bertha was under his care at last, and while they 
traversed the span of road before them he would woo 
her ear by unburdening his heart. 

The inmate of the little house in the shadow of the 
cedar trees glided forth, paused in the garden and 
plucked the most delicate stars and sprays of the night 
flowers to twine in her black tresses, with a careless yet 
skillful touch, and attach to her breast. She emerged 
on the road, moving with languid grace and holding in 
her left hand a fan of white ostrich feathers, mounted 
on pearl sticks. Such was the lovely and alluring 
figure that drifted softly across the range of sight of 
Mr. Rainer and Bertha in the distance. The former, 
agitated and self-absorbed, gave slight heed to the in- 
truder; Bertha saw and recognized her, marveling at 


TROPICAL MOONLIGHT 


25S 


her gauzy draperies and the shimmering lights on 
the fan. 

“ Aspasia ! ” she exclaimed in surprise. 

“ Mrs. Hooper’s maid. I saw her once in London,” 
said Mr. Rainer, impatiently, as he glanced at the white 
form. 

Further speech was checked on the lips of his com- 
panion, for, at the moment, another person became vis- 
ible on the highway behind them. Bertha’s heart gave 
a great bound and seemed to stand still. Henry Ather- 
ton was coming along the path. She forgot the pres- 
ence of Mr. Rainer and the night flower. Her first 
impulse was to turn with outstretched hands. Her 
second instinct to recoil and pause, as if rooted to the 
spot, amazed, bewildered, almost stupefied by a violent 
revulsion of feeling. 

The young man drew near, without especially notic- 
ing two other pedestrians, and hummed a song. 
Aspasia walked slowly towards him and took up the 
refrain. Then they both laughed. A few paces apart, 
the Lieutenant said, gaily: 

“ We are oflp to-morrow. I have come to bid you 
good-bye, my beauty.” 

“ So soon.^* Ah, take me with you.” 

The white-robed siren slipped her arm through his, 
and they strolled away under the cedars in the direction 
of the little house. 

Such was the vision presented to Bertha in one flash 
of vivid conviction. Her former friend had not hast- 
ened after her. He sought Aspasia, a servant, with 
negro blood in her veins, to bid farewell instead. 
Bertha was too confused to fully understand it all; 
but, for the first time, the instinct of jealousy flamed 
in her breast, mingled with scorn and disdain of Aspasia 


254 


A BERMUDA LILY 


and grief over the degradation of Henry Atherton. 
She was robbed of her rights by a creature far more 
beautiful than herself, in creamy draperies, with night 
flowers clinging to her perfumed tresses. In one 
moment of ungovernable anger she was required to 
drink the bitter cup of humiliation to the very dregs. 
She had been lightly set aside and forgotten for 
Aspasia, a slave girl! Awaiting separation from a 
promised bride at home to ask her hand, as Bertha 
fondly imagined, he had sunk a step lower in the social 
scale in pursuit of pleasure. Truly his friend. Captain 
Kirby, had reason to be proud of his work of interfer- 
ence and espionage. How much more readily she 
blamed Captain Kirby, rather than his unstable com- 
rade. 

“ Let us go back,” said Bertha with a slight shud- 
der. ‘‘ The trees look so black.” 

“ But Aunt Ellen will be waiting just beyond,” 
urged the yachtsman, for whom the fragrant shadows 
of the grove had no terrors, but, rather, represented 
a tender veil of soft obscurity wherein to make an 
avowal. Bertha submitted to being thus led on, and he 
spoke of his love in low, fervent tones, carried away by 
opportunity. The now shy bachelor never clearly knew 
afterwards what he confessed to the one woman to whom 
he had been drawn body and soul. The longings of 
his whole existence for a mate, a sympathetic second 
self, were disclosed to her alone. When the open space 
of road beyond was reached she paused, withdrew the 
hand he had taken, and confronted him. The stillness 
of the place and the hour was all about them, and the 
silvery splendor of the moon. The cedars formed a 
black archway, from which they had emerged, with the 
delicate network of twigs and branches outlined on the 


TROPICAL MOONLIGHT 


255 


white ground. The bats circled out of the darkness 
above their heads and flitted back again. The tinkle of 
a guitar was audible, played in the garden of the little 
house, and the voice of Aspasia, mellow and sweet, sang 
a mocking and piquant little French song about love 
as the effervescent sparkle in the wine goblet, the flight 
of a butterfly, a trifle best forgotten. 

Bertha looked at Albert Rainer. 

“You! ” she said in a voice quivering with passion. 
“ Marry you.^ I do not understand. Why should you 
even think of me.?* ” 

“ I think of no other, my dear girl,” he replied. 

She made a gesture of impatience and weariness. 

“ Do not speak like that again,” she said, hoarsely. 
“ I love another man. I shall care only for him all my 
life.” 

“ Impossible ! ” cried Albert Rainer, imperiously. 
“ Who is he.? Before God, I have the right to know.” 

She hesitated a moment, then drew herself up 
proudly and answered: 

“ A soldier. You have seen him just now.” 


CHAPTER XXVI 


PESTILENCE 

In the ensuing month of June a transport from the 
West Indies cast anchor in the offing to await the usual 
visit of the health ofiicer before permission was accorded 
to come on shore for provisions and fuel, or the deci- 
sion was taken of proceeding northward to Nova 
Scotia. The condition of the ship’s company was 
good, but the soldiers on board had been stationed at 
Jamaica, Trinidad and in the British Antilles amidst 
the miasmas of tropical vegetation, the blue mists of 
night and the hot vapors of sunrise, where the alli- 
gators lurk in the slime of Stygian floods and the rot- 
ting ribs of skeleton ships strew the shores, their 
former crews smitten by the breath of pestilence. 

“ But to no one is it given to wander with impunity 
under palm trees,” said Goethe, 

Bermuda, otherwise safe in mid-ocean, has ever been 
reputed fearful of the maladies brought to the rock 
by the wandering craft of the globe. 

The weather had been heavy and dull during the 
spring months. The waters were silvery and of a 
molten tranquillity, and the horizon veiled in low hang- 
ing fogs. 

On board the transport the captain and the surgeon 
exchanged a brief remark aft, while awaiting the sani- 
tary inspection in the arrival of the boat of the health 
officer. The troops grumbled at the delay, lounging 
about in groups. 


PESTILENCE 


257 


Henry Atherton came on deck and exclaimed: 

“ There is that beggarly shark again in the wake of 
the vessel! I fancy the villain has followed us all the 
way from Jamaica.” 

He established himself in a long chair and bade his 
servant bring some things up from his cabin to while 
away an hour, books, his favorite pipe, periodicals, 
and a tobacco pouch. Stay! How did that purse of 
netted silk come to be entangled with the cords and 
tassels of the pouch.? He once bought it at a charity 
bazaar here in Bermuda of a blooming maiden named 
Bertha. He had not given the purse a thought since. 
And the books.? These were the very copies of Goethe 
and Heine ordered out from England to read with the 
old German, Everhard. No! He did not feel inclined 
to read, somehow, and tossed aside the volumes petu- 
lantly. He was all right, of course, only a trifle lan- 
guid, and his head ached. Here he was on the Ber- 
muda Reef once more ! He strolled to the bulwark and 
stood there scanning the shore. How he would like to 
pause in the cool green dell where the ferns grew and 
have the pretty boy bind the thick, waxen leaves of the 
healing air-plant around his own throbbing temples. 
Even a plunge from an upset boat into those clear 
waves would be delicious. A picture arose before him, 
unreal, even faintly blurred, of a white cottage on the 
headland. A girl’s face, pure and resolute, bent 
towards him, as he struggled in the sea, and a girl’s 
hand was stretched forth to save him from drowning. 
They called her Bertha, and while her father gave his 
own opinions of Heine or Shakespeare, he read to her 
in an undertone Goethe’s parting of the ways, and 
something about choosing between two women in youth, 
to obey one or the other. 


258 


A BERMUDA LH^Y 


On the Bermuda Reef. The low, green shores 
seemed to him a land of promise. 

A boat came near, emerging from a tortuous side 
channel among the shoals and manipulated by a soli- 
tary fisherman. Henry Atherton recognized Eric. 

“ Hello, Eric!” 

The young man bent forward and whistled. 

The Swede gazed up at him and grinned. 

“ All well at home, Eric.? Tell them I am coming to 
see them again when we land,” said the Lieutenant. 

Eric nodded and tacked nearer. 

“ Wait!” 

Acting on impulse, the officer gathered up some of 
the articles scattered on deck, tying the books in his 
silk pocket-handkerchief and slipping several coins of 
gold and silver into the netted purse. 

“ Catdh, Eric ! These books are for the master, 
the purse for Pedro and the tobacco pouch for your- 
self. 

Eric caught the gifts deftly, stowed them away out 
of sight, and veered off before his propinquity could 
be questioned. 

“ A fisherman I used to know,” said the officer in a 
slow and thick voice. 

He returned to his chair. 

The captain and the surgeon looked at each other. 
They were brave men of few words, who did not flinch 
at the post of duty. Possibly they had discerned a 
shape following in the wake of the ship up from the 
hot reek of poisonous swamp and ooze of the tropics, 
more stealthy and terrible than the shark, an intang- 
ible wraith, bred of the vapors that insidiously sap the 
current of life, hooded, baffling, yet alert, and ever 


PESTILENCE 


259 


more ready to claim the strong and stalwart as victims 
than the weak. 

Suddenly Henry Atherton moved, staggered and 
fell. The surgeon hastened to his side, and he was 
borne below. 

The boat of the health officer came alongside, and 
speedily the yellow flag floated from the mast, pro- 
claiming an infected ship. 

When the shadows of evening had once more gath- 
ered over sea and shore, a rigid human form, shrouded 
in canvas, was consigned to the main off the Bermuda 
Reef from the side of the vessel, sinking through the 
dim fathoms, past the rock pinnacle and sandy ledges, 
where ocean is deepest. A few hurried words of reli- 
gious service were succeeded by an ominous splashing 
sound, and then there was silence as twilight deepened 
to night. 

The island world saw the yellow flag fluttering in 
the distance, and pursued the usual routine of events. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


ON THE BERMUDA REEF 

Mrs. Russell sat in her favorite arm-chair, knitting 
and meditating. She wondered why her husband had 
kept Bertha and Pedro at Palmetto Lodge the previous 
night. In the morning he had given them a further 
errand for this day of seeking the Captain’s house in 
the pony carriage, with strict injunctions to his wife 
to detain the young people for a second night on their 
return. 

The sound of voices in the garden aroused her from 
revery. She arose quietly, put aside her work and 
listened. Something had happened. She was acutely 
aware of it without words. 

Doctor Russell had entered the gate, followed by 
the Captain. Both had their habitual aspect, save that 
the cheeks of the little old gentleman seemed to have 
lost their wintry bloom, while the ruddy countenance 
of the sailor had acquired a grey pallor. 

“ Martha!” 

The old woman approached swiftly through the 
bushes. 

“ You will be wanted,” said the Doctor. 

“ Very well, sir,” she replied, calmly. 

He placed his hand on her shoulder. Captain Cox 
clenched his fists in the depths of his capacious pockets 
with an expression of dogged resolution. Martha re- 
garded them solemnly. 

Has the world fully accorded to the black woman her 
260 


ON THE BERMUDA REEF 


261 


laurel crown of honor for her inestimable virtues as a 
nurse in illness? Not only does she rank as the hope 
of entire communities in epidemic panic of the southern 
range of the American continent, but the white travel- 
ers to the heart of Africa have found the same skill 
and sympathy in ministering to suffering on the part 
of the untutored native, learned only in Nature’s great 
pharmacy of herbs, roots and fruits. 

“ The fever has come,” continued the physician. It 
is here.” 

“ Is it goin’ to be mighty bad? ” queried Martha. 

“ God knows. They say the infected ship brought 
it, and that young officer, Atherton, gave Eric some 
things in his boat before the quarantine,” said Doctor 
Russell. 

“No, sah!” retorted Martha with conviction. 
“ Don’t you believe no sich foolishness. It was a com- 
ing all de time, a brooding in de sky, and down under 
de earth, and a creepin’ over de sea. Our islands is 
ready, sah.” 

The two men were silent a moment. 

“ Eric is dead,” said Doctor Russell at length. 

“Lord save us!” ejaculated Martha under her 
breath. 

“ Everhard has spent his time poring over some 
books. We must watch him now,” added the Doctor. 
“ I sent those children over to your home with a letter, 
Tom. Waylay them on the road and keep them here 
to-night.” 

“ Well! I’ye fought Yellow Jack in some port since 
I was a lad, and I’m not going to give in to him at 
last ! ” exclaimed the Captain. 

Then Aunt Ellen, with a pale, stricken face and 
hands that trembled a little, stood in the doorway. 


26 ^ 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ Come in first and take some food,” she admonished, 
even as the apostle Paul bade the crew of the vessel 
about to be wrecked on the Island of Malta strengthen 
themselves for the ordeal. 

Martha drove away in the gig. She carried the 
identical bandbox taken on a former visit to the cottage. 
She did not exchange her turban for a bonnet of cere- 
mony to-day. Had she not affirmed she would be 
wanted when she came again The death moths had 
been fluttering about in the gloaming of late, and the 
boy Pedro had dared to gaze into a jar of water the 
night before, although he would not confess what he 
saw there. 

Aunt Ellen and the Captain were left alone together. 

“ Tom, I am going over to the church.” 

“ Are you strong enough, lass ? ” he inquired, kindly. 

“ I am strong,” she w'hispered. 

She tottered through the churchyard and entered 
the cool and quiet sanctuary which was so closely asso- 
ciated with all the events of her married life. Her 
brother followed her. She knelt in the aisle and caught 
his hand, praying aloud : “ Oh, God, be with us in this 
hour of trial.” 

“ Amen ! ” said the Captain. 

In the meanwhile Bertha and Pedro had threaded 
the labyrinth of public terror, as it were, all day, and 
only regained Palmetto Lodge in the dusk. Pedro was 
flighty in mood, and Bertha half vexed. They had 
awaited the return of Captain Cox at the Port for 
hours, with the letter which Doctor Russell had given 
them to deliver and bring back a reply. The China- 
man, Worth Sincere, chiefly dozed with his head against 
the kitchen door. The steward, Dick, had gone to a 
distant parish. The young people were docile and 


ON THE BERMUDA REEF 


obedient. They finally drove back to Palmetto Lodge 
to report the failure of their mission. Aunt Ellen 
reassured them, gave them supper and made excuse that 
Everhard would be displeased if they ventured further 
in the phaeton in the darkness. Pedro was restive. He 
burst into tears and wailed: 

“ Oh, let me go home ! 1 want to get hacic there.*' 

He was soothed by feminine influence and safely en- 
sconced in bed, the key turned on the outside of the 
door of the chamber he occupied to keep him from 
flitting away to the headland through the night. 
Bertha found Aunt Ellen grave and reticent, and soon 
followed Pedro’s example. 

Left alone, the old lady went about setting the house 
in order, and resumed her arm-chair to wait. Had she 
been a Roman Catholic instead of a staunch Protestant, 
she would have counted the beads of a rosary in prayer, 
such was her groping human need of aid in her painful 
vigil. When suspense became insupportable she went 
to the door. Neighbors came and went with awed and 
whispered conferences. There were shadows abroad in 
the midnight air that seemed like the wings of half- 
revealed spirits, and the whisperings of the wind amidst 
the palm fronds had a dread meaning to the island 
world. Men’s hearts failed them for fear. Supersti- 
tion had free scope to apprehend that pestilence had 
been wafted ashore from the doomed ship, even as the 
Parthians were avenged on the Romans when the army 
of Cassius in lower Mesopotamia was smitten with mys- 
terious maladies attributed to the golden coffer in the 
subterranean cell of the plundered temple of Apollo 
at Seleucia, placed there in primeval times by Chaldean 
spells. Doctor Russell and the Captain came with the 


264 


A BERMUDA LILY 


morning. Aunt Ellen served coffee without needless 
delay for interrogation. 

“ Martha is still at the headland, but there is no 
more need of anyone,” said the Doctor. 

Aunt Ellen bowed her head and clasped her hands 
on her breast in silent prayer. The Captain looked 
out of the window. 

At this moment the sound of voices and laughter 
became audible, and Bertha opened the door, followed 
by Pedro. The bloom of youth and refreshing slumber 
was on both faces. 

“ Good morning,” said Bertha, blithely. “ Are we 
late.'^ Pedro is such a lazy child! I had to unfasten 
the door and shake him awake.” 

Pedro smiled, then pulled the dress of his young 
mistress, impatiently. 

“ Come I Let us go home,” he pleaded. 

Bertha looked at the others and the color fled from 
her cheek. Pedro shrank closer to her side and re- 
garded the older people in turn, with dilating eyes. 

“ What is the matter.? Oh, tell me I ” the girl gasped. 

The Doctor spoke quietly. He mentioned the vessel 
with the yellow flag and the young officer, Atherton, 
on board, who had given some books to Eric for her 
father. She scrutinized his features anxiously while he 
spoke, until horror succeeded in a dawning intuition of 
his meaning. 

“ Pedro, papa is dead.” 

The low cry escaped from her lips, and she knew no 
more. 

After that Bermuda awaited the fulfillment of the 
summer months, when the garrison was destined to be 
swept off like leaves, those stalwart soldiers who had 
met in a mock fight on the birthday of the young hero. 


ON THE BERMUDA REEF 


265 


The officers were to disappear from the mess, one by 
one, until such time as the remnant could be removed 
to the cooler latitude of Nova Scotia. The Governor 
remained at his post with his wife at his side. Societies 
of crosses, red or white, brotherhoods of mutual aid, 
and sisterhoods of trained nurses were not as much 
talked of in those days, yet humanity was the same in 
courage and self-abnegation. The weeks merged to 
months, and the evil was stayed. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


A DELAYED LETTER 

Pedeo grew wan and hollow-eyed. He wearied of 
Palmetto Lodge and the Port. One day he slipped 
away home. Captain Cox had sailed at noon on the 
Princess Royal for Demerara, and proposed to take 
the boy with him ; but Pedro capriciously refused to go. 

The bark Princess Royal continued to ply her trade, 
sailing south and north in her own deliberate fashion. 
Competition with the swift steamer in the run to New 
York was seldom attempted. 

The lad sped lightly, as if his feet were winged, 
until by adroit turnings of intersecting paths and short 
cuts familiar to him, the headland was reached. 

The white cottage stood ever with doors and win- 
dows open, dismantled and deserted. Pedro roamed 
through the empty chambers, peered into Eric’s cabin 
and lingered at the entrance of the cave, wistfully. 
He was like a lost spirit. The master and Eric were 
gone. Where should he seek them.? Up in the sky the 
clouds floated in fleecy masses of snowy vapor. Were 
they there.? Death had no terrors for him, possibly 
no meaning. Ah ! The sea beckoned to the boy, 
smiled, and lured him with a caressing warmth. A sail 
caught golden reflections from sunshine on the horizon. 
The sail was the bark Princess Royal, and Pedro felt 
regret that he was not on board with Captain Cox. 
Sailors were always kind to him. He might overtake 
the vessel. It was not too late for such a prank. The 
266 


A DELAYED LETTER 


267 


dimple of mischief came into his soft cheek as he 
smoothed the plumage of the flamingo and the lame 
heron. Down in the cove was one of Eric’s boats, 
which the neighboring family of negroes had used that 
morning. Pedro entered it and hoisted the sail. The 
spider monkey hopped after him, and sat cowering in 
the bows with a puckered visage. The little craft went 
out over the sparkling waters. Pedro steered for the 
distant ship. He did not return. The passing vessel 
was not the Princess Royals and his fate was unknown. 

“ Nothing of him that doth fade 
But doth suffer a sea-change 
Into something rich and strange. 
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his hnell.” 

A long time afterward, quite beyond the barriers of 
another existence, as it seemed to her, Bertha took up 
her hat, listlessly, one day, and told Aunt Ellen that 
she would go for a walk on Harrington Sound. What- 
ever sentiments of almost filial gratitude may have been 
dormant in her soul, Bertha chafed at the restraints of 
dwelling under the wing of Aunt Ellen, as did the rest- 
less boy Pedro. She strolled slowly to the borders of 
the Sound with a feeling of escape. The waters of the 
enclosed lagoon, of an exquisite transparency of hue 
and tranquil current in more remote portions, seemed 
to her like her own life, pent up and forced to rush 
through the narrow outlet of communication with the 
sea. She paused under the crumbling bank beside a 
sheltered coral pool and gazed into the translucent 
depths of amber and beryl, where the fairy architec- 
ture of Nature was visible in the growth of nullipores, 
algse and the polyps expanded delicate crowns of 
tentacles. She was strangely alone. Sadness of a 


268 


A BERMUDA LILY 


subdued sort took the form of weakness and depression 
after one of Aunt Ellen’s wearisome exhortations on 
duty. Bertha had lost all, and was contented to brood 
over her sorrow for the rest of her life. She could not 
remain always at Palmetto Lodge. Existence there 
was Harrington Sound, after the open expanse of 
shore of the cottage of the headland. Should she re- 
turn to Noah’s Ark and dwell there alone.'’ The isola- 
tion appalled her. She would behold her father with 
each shade of night, and the laughter of Pedro would 
be wafted on every breeze. No ! She could not bear it. 
Her thoughts turned to Rose Hill as a refuge and 
delight. 

The Captain approached, greeted his niece cheer- 
fully, and gave her a letter. His explanation was that 
Evei^hard had once visited the Port and consigned this 
missive to his keeping, requesting him to place it in 
the cabinet of the closet. The envelope was addressed 
to his daughter, and the mariner was enjoined to de- 
liver it after the writer’s death. The Captain had 
consulted Doctor Russell, who advised delay in order 
not to arouse fresh grief over her bereavement. 

The color rushed to the girl’s cheeks and her eyes 
sparkled, as she listened to the kindly meant explana- 
tions of her uncle. 

‘‘ Why was it not given me before.? ” she urged. 

“ Your Aunt Ellen feared you were not strong 
enough,” he replied, quietly. 

He did not supplement that, in reason, the letter 
could not possess the value of a testament, as Ever- 
hard had been wrecked on the islands, even without 
luggage, and now the contents of his abode were wholly 
destroyed. 

Bertha opened the envelope. The enclosed letter was 


A DELAYED LETTER 


269 


brief, and written in German. She read and reread it, 
her features expressing surprise, grief and a profound 
interest. 

“ My Dear Child: 

“ There are more things in this world than are 
dreamed of in your philosophy as you sleep above 
stairs. What do you know of life beyond the range of 
your Aunt Ellen*s cassava puddings? I write this 
letter for you to read after my death, for you will prob- 
ably survive me. I doubt the wisdom of the measure. 
What does it all matter? If that young man had not 
been here I should have neglected the task.” 

“The young man.? Who was he.?” interposed the 
Captain, abruptly. 

Bertha colored faintly and hesitated in her trans- 
lation, for her uncle had confessed his ignorance of 
German, save a few words picked up at sea. 

“ Pedro upset the boat, you know, and the officer 
was hurt. He talked with papa of his own country.” 

“ I remember,” assented the Captain, lighting his 
pipe and pacing up and down on the brink of the coral 
pool. 

Bertha continued her perusal eagerly and tremu- 
lously. Her father was not only an obscure teacher 
of languages, in exile, but the eldest son of a once pow- 
erful house of the Austrian Empire, and born in a 
feudal castle of the Vorarlberg. Henry Atherton had 
visited the spot in a summer excursion, as a boy. Ber- 
tha’s parent had studied at several universities, trav- 
eled much and mingled with the political life of his 
time, more as a student than as a partisan. His own 
father, a collector of pictures, medals and rare gems, 
married a second wife, a vain and ambitious woman of 
inferior origin, who speedily usurped the first place in 


^70 


A BERMUDA LILY 


the affections of the elderly count. As for Everhard, 
he seemed to have been bom weary of vassalage, taxes 
on revenues, disorders of states in Styria, Transyl- 
vania, Carinthia or the Tyrol; wars with the Turks, 
Catholic and Protestant intrigues with Spain and the 
Netherlands. Unfortunately, he devoted more time to 
the occult sciences, Virgil, Horace and Anacreon, as 
well as the arts, than to holding his own in the castle 
of his ancestors by personal influence. A young brother 
grew up there instead. In his letter he compared him- 
self, humorously, to Rudolph II of Hapsburg, who 
abdicated in favor of Matthias, while the stepmother 
resembled Francis I in a greed of wealth, which would 
have led her also to make the experiment of fusing 
several small diamonds into one large gem, by means 
of burning glass. Then came a day when the youth of 
Brussels, Liege and Brabant, together with the Uni- 
versity of Louvain, made seditious speeches, formed 
soceities, and Everhard became implicated through 
friends, as a listener to revolutionary sentiments, if 
not an open partisan. He received a message from his 
invalid father in a letter from his stepmother, warning 
him to fly before arrest and political imprisonment. A 
purse of gold accompanied the intimation of impend- 
ing danger. Everhard went to England and took ship 
for America. He was a coward, as he affirmed. His 
soul quailed at the prospect of long years of captivity 
in a cell, with triple windows, of one of those fortress 
prisons of the defiles and crags of the Tyrol. Mad- 
ness or suicide lay that way. In after time the bitter- 
ness of doubt often recurred to him as to the truth of 
the statement. Had the old count actually sent the 
message.?^ Was the government on his track, as a dis- 
loyal subject, when he had merely been a visionary 


A DELAYED LETTER 


211 


student? The stepmother entered into possession and 
set up her boy as heir. Bertha, in far distant Bermuda, 
was only a girl. A sense of justice in establishing the 
rights of a son might have nerved him to return to his 
own country and reveal himself. 

“ The poor father ! ” sobbed the daughter, folding 
the sheet. “ His name was Albert Everhard von Reich- 
tenstein. He had always the bearing of a grand 
seigneur. Oh, Uncle Tom ! I must be a countess ! ” 

‘‘ My dear girl, a man does not need a coronet to be 
a gentleman in this world ! ” exclaimed the Captain 
with warmth, when he had recovered from his first 
bewilderment. “ Would you like to go to the castle 
of your family?” 

Bertha reflected on the matter a moment, then shook 
her head sadly. 

“ I might go as a sort of Helena, a pilgrim, with 
staff and scallop shell. No! I am only a girl, and it 
does not signify.” 

The Captain uttered an exclamation and put out his 
pipe. 

“ Only to think of it I He never told me a word. I 
saved him from the wreck and brought him into port, 
and have been alongside all these years. I did not know 
him at all! ” 

Bertha went to the honest sailor, put her arms 
around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. 

‘‘ He was grateful. Uncle Tom,” she said, softly. 
“ Never doubt it.” 

He did not leave her alone. 

“ Come home now to Aunt Ellen, like a good girl,” 
he said, patting her on the shoulder. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


A WOMAN GARDENER 

The long, blank period of illness which had followed 
her father’s death had swept Bertha aside even from 
participation in the anxieties and dangers of the sum- 
mer pestilence on the islands. She mourned and wept 
in a secret widowhood over a youth buried off the 
Bermuda Reef, to whom she had been as the perfume 
of a flower, carelessly plucked, then thrown aside. She 
hardened her heart against all other claims of interest. 

“ She mopes too much,” said Aunt Ellen. “ It is 
not good for a girl to mope.” 

“ Give her a little more time,” suggested the Doctor. 

Aunt Ellen had set herself systematically to over- 
coming all obstacles existing between a famous flnan- 
cier and her niece, since the night at the theater. When 
she broached the subject Bertha flashed into open re- 
bellion, and refused to listen to reason. The devotion, 
the moral worth and the excellent position, from a 
worldly point of view of the suitor, were nothing to the 
defiant maiden. Bertha had not attempted to put her- 
self in his place, and view life from his standpoint, with 
the intuitive feminine devotion which she was prepared 
to lavish on Henry Atherton. Aunt Ellen found w'hole- 
some occupation and took a fresh lease of interest in 
the holding of Mr. Rainer’s pearls. Ever ready to 
smooth away difficulties and disentangle knots of diffi- 
culty and misunderstanding between sighing swain and 
a marriageable girl, she had seen the fabric of marriage 
Q79 


A WOMAN GARDENER 


^73 


built up, on many occasions, thanks to her own partici- 
pation, and all the affair managed with the most inno- 
cent air in the world. Was she to be foiled by Ever- 
hard’s child.? For her the romance and thrill of 
emotion in the suit of Albert Rainer; for Bertha the 
scornful repulsion of any lover. Mrs. Russell lost no 
opportunity of dwelling on the theme of love to her 
niece, a subject that invariably moved the soft enthusi- 
asm of the older woman, whose hair was white, journey- 
ing with her mate towards the goal of her own golden 
wedding. Chafed by the perpetual reiteration of such 
admonitions, which was like the dropping of water on 
a stone, Bertha would exclaim: 

“ Oh, of course you wish me to marry Mr. Rainer, 
when you know that I do not care for him in the least. 
You believe everyone should marry. Aunt Ellen. Why 
can you not leave other people alone in peace ? ” 

Mrs. Russell reproved the lack of respect of such 
ebullitions, bringing the penitent orphan to her knee 
in swift contrition, and when she had Bertha there, 
holding the warm, young hand in her shriveled palm, 
she resumed the thread of her argument, smoothly and 
persistently, sounding a refrain which had delighted 
her own ears all these years. Wedded life was the true 
sphere of every woman. The repugnance of the sub- 
ject to Bertha did not deter Aunt Ellen fulfilling 
her mission. Was there not a charm in overcoming 
petty prejudice and dispelling mere whimsical dislike, 
only too often proved to be wholly without true foun- 
dation when calmly analyzed. It was not the first time 
in a varied experience that Mrs. Russell was required 
to urge on a reluctant girl that the mind and character 
of a man of good sense are of more importance than 
the classical type of his features, and the qualities of 


274 


A BERMUDA LILY 


his heart than the tint of his hair. The bow of rash, 
youthful indignation can be too highly strung. Aunt 
Ellen did not perceive it. She warned Bertha not to 
slight her chances of a suitable settlement in life, in- 
stead of choosing lonely years of austere spinsterhood 
in the future, when the older generation of kindred 
had passed away. 

“ I fear that young officer was most unworthy, my 
dear, but young men are too often unfaithful,” sug- 
gested mature wisdom. 

Oh, the bitterness of being condoled with more for 
the lack of merit in a lover than for his loss ! 

The reading of the delayed letter written by her 
father had a marked influence on Bertha. She began 
to make inquiries about Mr. Rainer. Why did he not 
return again to Bermuda? When would he come? He 
promised to act as a sort of guardian in her interests. 
She was impatient to consult him. She even sought 
Carey Brothers for information concerning the erratic 
movements of the King of Finance. Carey Brothers 
smiled benevolently. Yes ; she would write the proposed 
letter. 

The Samuel Cox household observed and criticized 
her. 

“ So we have a countess in our family,” said Mrs. 
Cox. 

“ I daresay Mr. Rainer would not object to a cor- 
onet with her name, if that is to be a match,” said 
Matilda with a spiteful giggle such as pretty and 
plump women sometimes indulge in. 

‘‘ Upon my word, Bertha does wear her heart on her 
sleeve,” said Fanny with severity. 

The yacht Bermuda Lily again threaded her way 
daintily through the reefs into port. Mr. Rainer came 


A WOMAN GARDENER 


275 


in response to a summons from Bertha. He did not 
doubt the issue. Events had actually followed a tran- 
quil, uneventful course on the islands, he reasoned, 
during his absence. A truly sagacious old lady had 
withheld his pearls. He did not wish to rudely shock 
the susceptibilities of a young girl. Now she was re- 
penting of a hasty refusal. He wished to surround her 
with delicate attentions. Her parentage interested 
without surprising him. Such exiles as Everhard have 
sought America for centuries. He was stung to jeal- 
ousy by the fact of a showy rattlepate of a Royal 
Engineer having captivated the fancy of Bertha. He 
had been offended by the indifference of the whimsical 
Everhard to his own importance. On the whole, he 
was prepared to accept the result with satisfaction. 

Bertha welcomed him with frank confidence, reminded 
him of his promise to aid her, and unfolded her plans. 
He must help her in the division of her property with 
the family. She wished to dwell at Rose Hill for her 
lifetime with Aspasia to serve her. The sons could be 
found places in the States. The daughter had de- 
parted for Paris. 

‘‘ How will you support yourself if you give away 
all your money.? ” demanded Mr. Rainer, amused and 
irritated. 

They stood on the terrace of Rose Hill, and the girl 
pointed to the enclosure in an intuition of delight in 
possession, the joy of restoring order to this flowery 
kingdom in obedience to the precept of Candide : II 
faut cultiver notre jardin.'* 

“ I might be a gardener,” she said, musingly. 

“ Would you like to grow potatoes or onions for the 

market? ” 


276 


A BERMUDA LILY 


“ I should like to rear flowers better. Could I sell 
flowers ? ” 

“ Why not ? ” he retorted in a tone of banter. “ Sow 
and reap Bermuda lilies.” 

He took her in his arms and held her close. 

“ Oh, my darling Bertha ! ” he exclaimed. “ Give up 
all this folly and come away with me! You shall have 
all the world can offer as my wife.” 

She withdrew from his embrace and confronted him. 
Her face blanched to the hue of her white dress, and 
she slowly measured him with a cold glance. 

“ You forget,” she said. 

Later, Mr. Rainer explained to Mrs. Russell, in a 
dry and brief manner, that he should revisit Bermuda 
no more at present. 

“ May I keep the string of pearls just a little while 
longer ? ” pleaded Aunt Ellen with a smile. 

He hesitated, then said : “ If you like.” 


CHAPTER XXX 


ALONE 

Beetha went to live at Rose Hill. 

“ Your daughter robbed me of what I valued most 
in the world,” she said, placing her hands on the shoul- 
ders of the elder Aspasia. 

“ I know it, missy ! I would have helped it if I 
could,” the latter rejoined. ‘‘ I have been robbed, too, 
in my time.” 

Poor mother ! ” said Bertha, softly. “We will live 
here together to the end.” 

Night came on, and the old mansion, so long silent 
and deserted, sheltered her. The tall clock in the vesti- 
bule ticked monotonously and struck the hours. The 
new mistress was not dismayed. 

When she sought her pillow, and slumber touched 
her eyelids, the sea called her in the heavy, turbid waves 
blown by the south wind. Pedro flitted along the shore 
before, with curls flying, while her father and Eric, two 
grave figures, watched her movements from the head- 
land. She carried in her hand the tropical seed, or nut, 
once captured on the tide from a boat by Henry Ath- 
erton. 

“ Fruit of the pine-tree, go down to the dead ! ” 

Who uttered the words.? Was it the boy’s clear 
treble, her own voice, hoarse and smothered in tone, or 
the sound of the wind and the sea.? She flung the nut 
far out into the water, and sank with it through depths 
of dim obscurity, battling her way for breath and 

m 


278 


A BERMUDA LILY 


escape amidst huge rocks, where moved creatures in- 
numerable of varied form and hue, to whom zones of 
temperature are as essential as climate to the denizens 
of earth, forests of interlacing trunks and branches, 
starred with the rainbow-tinted shells of clinging mol- 
lusks and the shadowy recesses of caverns, where bones 
lay bleaching, grim guardians of the sunken treasures 
of lost ships, for which live men still dive and grope. 
With dread and fear she saw, like Clarence : “ The 
slimy bottom of the deep.” 

An irresistible impulse forced her, only a feeble 
woman, to advance to those ranges of silence where 
tideless waters hold in suspense objects as they sank. 
She was chilled by propinquity with the sphere of 
human calamity and suffering in the precincts of death. 
Dark forms began to trouble the region about her, in 
perpetual yearning upward, angel summoned to celes- 
tial heights of resurrection. Here muscular arms were 
raised to free the body from grave-clothes, there the 
cerements still held hosts of the veiled and hooded 
shapes lost in mists, and beyond, in dawning light, un- 
trammeled throngs, with naked shoulders and glistening 
limbs, clasped hands in adoration of promised revelation 
of eternal peace. The living mortal, frigid and inert 
spectator, understood that in the subtle movement, the 
sweeping circle of change, the half-defined, intangible 
unrest of lament of lapsing dirges, like the beating of 
the surf on a coast, the sea was giving up the dead 
which were in it. 

When the dawn came Bertha went to the window and 
looked out on the trees and the grey sea in the distance. 

“ I died out there, also,” she murmured. “ Oh, 
Christ, what is to be my resurrection? ” 

In spirit she had joined that great sisterhood of the 


ALONE 


^79 


shores of the world, who gaze forth from their strand 
of home on the ocean which has become the sepulchre 
of their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. Her 
dead had been consigned to the deep. 

The new mistress of Rose Hill surveyed her domain 
with a dawning interest. “ Help me to live,” she whis- 
pered to the flowers, and these made answer : “ Live 
and rejoice in your youth and health.” 

Obeying one of the first impulses of humanity, Bertha 
aided in separating the tangled wealth of vegetation 
into terrace, parterre, labyrinths of bloom, archways 
of a classical formality of design, domes of soft verdure 
and cascades and fountains of blossoms. She planted 
with her own hands the twelve varieties of palm that 
flourishes in this clime. The date, cocoanut and cab- 
bage palm should yet soar majestically above other 
trees within these boundaries, although, like Cicero’s 
industrious husbandman, not one berry of harvest 
would she ever reap. 

The girl accepted seriously that playful suggestion 
of Mr. Rainer’s concerning the potato, the excellent 
tuber found growing wild in Chili and Peru, the “ kind 
of earth nut ” of Cieza de Leon, subject to the ex- 
tremes of human prejudice on transportation to 
Europe. She defined boundaries of miniature planta- 
tions of the tomato, the onion and the potato, pro- 
tected by shrubbery. She took pains to foster the field 
of arrow-root, formerly the principal article of export 
yielded by the patchy soil of the islands. Bertha ob- 
served with sympathy the maranta arundinacea when 
the rhizome, planted in May, obeyed all those mysteri- 
ous influences in growth which so much resemble the 
instincts of insects and birds, sending up a stem to a 
height of three feet, with iris-like leaves decking the 


280 


A BERMUDA LILY 


crown, with pretty, w’hite, arrow-shaped flowers, in due 
course, until such time, after ten months of chemical 
elaboration of plant tissues in the earth, a root should 
be ripened, jointed, resembling ivory, then covered 
with a brownish skin, to be dried and ground to a coarse 
pulp in mills, by oxen or horses, purifled in water, 
strained through sieves, and ultimately emerge as the 
snowy starch of commerce. Flower and root and slow, 
careful growth of months taught the young gardener 
a gracious, if humble, lesson. 

Doctor Russell and the Captain did not neglect their 
niece in her new sphere. They pottered about Rose Hill 
early and late, repairing the mansion in roof, portal 
and casement, and zealously planned a garden. The 
physician installed a responsible man as gardener and 
the Captain frequently appeared suddenly with half a 
dozen negro lads to carry out some scheme of his own 
of weeding and digging on a remote boundary. In 
addition, Dick, the steward, bringing baskets of pro- 
visions from the Port, lingered an hour to assist in 
the task on hand. Worth Sincere, fetching fowls and 
fresh eggs, sped lightly down a side path to kneel in a 
corner and lay out a border in a Celestial pattern, with 
the aid of a ball of cord and two pegs of sticks. Aunt 
Ellen held sternly aloof to manifest her disapproval 
of her niece. Martha came to arrange the house. She 
manifested her severe disapproval of the patient and 
submissive Aspasia with all the dignity of the African 
matron of respectability, but, in time, relented. 

“Who knows that missy may not be happy yet?” 
quoth this sable philosopher. 

Bertha was too young to fully verify the assurance 
that to those who suffer there is no solace like working 
in a garden. Her brief experience had been tragic 


ALONE 


281 


enough for her to long to turn aside and dwell apart 
when she had made the reparation of dividing Aunt 
Hooper’s bequest among the relatives. 

Sky, sea and land were kind to the girl. The very 
winds, tempered to balmy breezes, seemed to waft seeds 
buoyed up by filaments of down in guise of tiny bal- 
loons, from the four quarters of the globe, to find a 
place in her domain to bloom in a marvelous variety of 
form, tint and fragrance. Peach-colored cistus, great 
white arums, jonquil, fiax, violet or verbena attached 
their fragile anchors of tendrils to wall, porch and 
moist nook. Orchids from tropical swamps, tawny 
gold, carmine and bronze poised, as it were, in the shade. 
The rose smiled on her, and she determined, as a first 
consideration, that her chosen home should deserve its 
name. Not only must waves of golden and crimson 
scent clothe these slopes in blush white Merveille de 
Lyon, deep carmine Prince Camille de Rohan, gorgeous 
General Jacquinot, snowy Niphetos, or Provence, and 
damask rivaling the glories of Paestum, but the ca- 
prices of modern experiment should be tested to blanch 
the Marechal Niel and make the hybrid teas assume 
novel forms of beauty. 

All the floral world should aid her in her task. 
Egypt would send her heliotrope, Hindustan the mari- 
gold, Judea and Persia the pomegranate, and Turkey 
the lilac, mimosa or ranunculus. She understood that 
the insects, flying from one flower to another, like busy 
postmen carrying letters, had their mission, and fairy 
cradles of seeds at the base of stalks would furnish 
other generations when pollen had been scattered, and 
silken petals should shrivel and fade. 

Bertha might here become a votary of the ancient 
creeds of earth, from the myrtle of Venus or the poppy 


282 


A BERMUDA LILY 


of Ceres to the snowdrop of the Feast of the Purifi- 
cation, St. Andrew’s cross and the herb Christopher of 
the Saint’s Calendar. 

Mrs. Russell came to Rose Hill actuated by a sense 
of duty. Bertha showed her a neat case and explained : 

‘‘ This is arrow-root to send to Mr. Rainer, as the 
Queen used to have gifts from Bermuda. Of course I 
did not plant it, and I cannot afford the land to raise 
more, but he will be interested. He is so kind. He has 
promised to arrange that all my plants shall have a 
sale in the American markets, if sent by the steam 
packet. I shall make a lot of money. Aunt Ellen.” 

“ I trust you will reward his devotion,” warned the 
older woman. 

“ Never, in the way you mean.” 

“ Then he will marry another.” 

“ Possibly. He suggested lily sowing and lily reap- 
ing. Who knows? ” 

There are those who believe that Bertha Everhard 
was the first to send forth the Bermuda lily to the 
world, and Mr. Albert Rainer, the famous financier and 
speculator, was her prophet in the enterprise. 

The matchmaker returned home, took up her knit- 
ting and meditated on the turn of affairs. She was 
irritated by the wayward conduct of Bertha, still her 
niece was young, and might have other suitors. The 
advent of the yacht and the owner had dazzled her 
sober mind. Albert Rainer must still be led by a silken 
thread of tact and encouragement, and not lost sight 
of by other members of the family. The result of her 
reflections was that Frances Cox was invited over to 
Palmetto Lodge to spend a few days. The young lady 
complied with alacrity. 

When the Princess Royal again set sail for New 


ALONE 


283 


York Fanny accompanied her uncle, the Captain. She 
carried a letter from Mrs. Russell to Mr. Rainer, and 
a case containing a string of pearls. She was en- 
joined to deliver the pearls in person. Fanny’s star 
was in the ascendant. Mr. Rainer was disabled, and 
confined to the house. The yacht had served him an 
ugly trick, and flung him, capriciously, against the 
bulwark, breaking his leg. Was Aunt Ellen aware of 
the accident He felt lonely, for the first time in his 
life, and depressed. The Captain was hearty in his 
sympathy. Miss Cox installed herself as nurse in the 
qualification of a sort of cousin from native land. She 
was sprightly, efficient and capable. She understood, 
above all other arts of her sex, that of encouraging a 
man. She brightened the silent mansion by her pres- 
ence. The Captain submitted to feminine tyranny with- 
out demur, and allowed the Princess Royal to sail under 
charge of the mate, in order to remain with his niece. 

‘‘ I hope you will accept the pearls,” said Mr. 
Rainer. “ I should not have got well so soon but for 
your care. I was out of sorts.” 

“ You have won the Japanese game of perfumes, 
my dear,” chuckled the Captain. “ I will send it to 
you when I reach home.” 

They were married quietly. Fanny gathered the 
reins of the matrimonial chariot with a skillful and 
firm hand. She made her way to the front rank every- 
where, as an attentive hostess, a useful friend, an ener- 
getic philanthropist, an amiable patroness of talent. 
She was speedily the best dressed woman of her circle. 
Her jewels were the envy of two hemispheres. She was 
a helpmate to Mr. Rainer in every sense of the word, 
and could be depended upon to aid him in the most 
critical emergencies. He was assured that, in her de- 


284 


A BERMUDA LILY 


votion, she would go through fire and water for him. 
She had style, grace and adaptability to all circum- 
stances. She studied popularity. Her husband ad- 
mired and respected her for her success. The union 
was harmonious without too much sentiment. The 
couple did not visit their native islands. The King of 
Finance gave up yachting, owing to his accident, and 
his wife was not fond of the sea. The yacht passed 
into other hands and the name was changed. The 
influence of the Rainers was felt on the coral reefs. 
Fanny speedily withdrew her father from the shop 
and placed him on an estate of a distant parish, where 
he pined for his afternoon club of whist in the veranda, 
and her mother moped transplanted from the narrow 
streets of St. Georges. Matilda’s boys were adopted 
and educated for a wider field of career by Mr. Rainer, 
who had no children of his own. 

Frances, plain of feature and angular of form, yet 
rounding out and mellowing in opulent prosperity, 
resembled the wife of the Roman Emperor Augustus 
in attaining all the aims of her ambition. She was pre- 
sented at court in a mauve robe, a creation of the Rue 
de la Paix of which she dreamed after the Christmas 
dinner at Palmetto Lodge. 

Captain Kirby waited over a packet at Bermuda. 
He was unchanged. He had escaped the ordeal of the 
transfer of his corps to the West Indies by obtaining 
leave of absence to go home. Subsequently he rejoined 
the troops in Nova Scotia. 

He walked along a white road and reached over the 
boundary wall of a suburban mansion to gather a lily. 
A woman approached the spot, carrying a spray of the 
lilies in her hand. She was a strange, even eccentric, 
figure, emerging from the environment of green shrub- 


ALONE 


285 


bery. Her dress was white, the fair tint of her face 
blanched to alabaster, and her abundant hair, once 
golden, colorless as verging to grey. The expression 
of her delicate features was grave and her large eyes 
were profound, sombre, yet questioning. She looked 
over the wall and recognized the pedestrian. 

“ Captain Kirby,” she said, “ will you come in and 
choose more flowers ? ” 

He accepted the invitation, shook hands with the 
hostess and entered the house to take tea. 

“ What a paradise of flowers you have made for 
yourself here,” he said. “ The place seems to be all 
lilies.” 

She was gratified by the intuition. 

“ This is the home of the Bermuda Lily,” she re- 
plied. “ I send them to the States and the Colonies. 
They are my messengers out in the world.” 

“ A charming idea,” said the officer. 

He traversed a lily-bordered path to the house, which 
was white as snow. The interior was of the same spot- 
less purity, with curtains and hangings of dull green 
velvet. On the wall hung the picture of the Angel of 
the Annunciation. The interview was brief and pain- 
ful topics avoided. Bertha experienced a certain 
childish satisfaction in serving her guest on Dresden 
porcelain just sent her by Mr. Rainer. Impulse moved 
her to impart: 

“ You may have heard that I lost my father in the 
fever. He spent many years on these islands. He was 
the Count Albert Everhard von Reichstenstein of 
Austria.” 

Captain Kirby made suitable response and took his 
leave. 

“ Always my enemy, yet we have scarcely ever ex- 


286 


A BERMUDA LILY 


changed a dozen words together,” thought Bertha, 
looking after him. 

Poor Bertha! The Royal Engineer was not inter- 
ested in her communication. He estimated all conti- 
nental titles very lightly, and as for herself, one 
colonial lady was similar to another. Man is an 
eternal mystery to himself. Captain Kirby thought of 
poor Harry Atherton in turn, and the fallacy of med- 
dling with the affairs of others. When he had reached 
London his cousin Mabel was married to the son of a 
brewer, recently knighted. His aunt chided him for 
considering the youthful attachment to Lieutenant 
Atherton as a serious engagement. For the rest, the 
amateur musician promised himself retirement in a few 
years to the life of a country gentleman in England, 
and the composition of a tempest at sea, suggested by 
a voyage once made from Halifax to the Bermudas. 

At Easter Mr. Albert Rainer stocked the casements 
of his town mansion with the Bermuda lily. The gra- 
cious emblem bloomed in masses, sheaves and sprays of 
exquisite fragrance. Other houses were similarly 
adorned for the season. Fanny, as a woman similarly 
placed might be expected to do, preferred orchids. 
She explained to her friends — and they were many — 
that it was a rite of patriotism with her husband. 

“ Are you happy ? ” asked Frances, glancing up 
from her book of daily engagements. 

He laughed, and watched the smoke of his cigarette 
fade amidst the lilies of the embrasure. 

“ What is happiness ? ” he mused. 

Two kind old men watched over the welfare of 
Bertha. 

^ Her youth has faded too quickly,” said the Doctor. 


ALONE 28^ 

“ She misses her father and the little lad,” said the 
Captain. 

Aunt Ellen broke the worsted of her ball with an 
impatient jerk. 

“ A girl to throw away a chance like that ! ” she 
exclaimed. 

Then the good lady’s meditations returned, with 
much complacency, to her clever niece, Frances. 

Life went on in the Coral Isles, where traces of the 
day of pestilence were softly obliterated. Nature fol- 
lowed the routine of her processes, in the blossoming 
of her plants in the sun, and the growth of waving 
fans of gorgonia, and long stems of the pink, tunicate 
diazona beneath the waters. 

The lighthouse star beams forth in the gathering 
shadows of night, man on the reef of mid-ocean speak- 
ing to fellow man threading his way over the waters 
to distant continents in a greeting of hope. 


THE END 









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